and Jimmy were equally ardent to carry the A.A. message. Jimmy started the Philadelphia group in 1940, while Fitz took the good news to Washington. The first meeting in Philadelphia was held in the home of George S. George was one of A.A.’s first loners. He had sobered up after reading the article “Alcoholics and God” written in 1939 by Morris Markey and published in the September issue of Liberty magazine by its then editor Fulton Oursler, who was to do much more for us later on. George’s case was a very severe one, even for those days of “last gaspers.” When the issue of Liberty first arrived, George was in bed drinking whiskey for his depression and taking laudanum for his colitis. The Markey piece hit George so hard that he went ex-grog and ex-laudanum instantly. He wrote to New York, and we gave his name to salesman Jimmy, who traveled that territory, and that’s how A.A. started in the City of Brotherly Love.
Philadelphia A.A. soon attracted the attention of three noted Philadelphia physicians, Drs. A. Wiese Hammer, C. Dudley Saul, and John F. Stouffer, the latter of the Philadelphia General Hospital. The outcome of this interest was the best of hospital care for alcoholics and the opening of a clinic. And it was Dr. Hammer’s friendship with Mr. Curtis Bok, owner of the Saturday Evening Post, that led to the publication in 1941 of Jack Alexander’s article. These friends could hardly have done more for us.
Fitz, living near Washington, D.C., had no such breaks. Near-failure dogged his efforts for years. But he finally planted seed there that bore fruit and before his death in 1943 he saw that seed flower. His sister Agnes rejoiced with him. She had loaned him and me $1,000 from her modest resources when, after the A.A. book fiasco in 1939, the future had looked the darkest. To her I send our everlasting thanks.
The year 1939 saw the arrival among us of still another unforgettable character, a woman alcoholic known to so many of us as Marty. At Blythewood Sanitarium in Greenwich, Connecticut, she had been a patient of Dr. Harry Tiebout’s, and he had handed her a prepublication manuscript copy of the A.A. book. The first reading made her rebellious, but the second convinced her. Presently she came to a meeting held in our living room at 182 Clinton Street, and from there she returned to Blythewood carrying this classic message to a fellow patient in the sanitarium: “Grennie, we aren’t alone any more.”
Marty pioneered a group in Greenwich so early in 1939 that some folks now think this one should carry the rating of A.A.’s Group Number Three. Backed by Dr. Harry and Mrs. Wylie, owner of Blythewood, the first meetings were held on the sanitarium’s grounds. Marty was one of the first women to try A.A., and she became in later years among the most active workers we have, as well as a pioneer in the field of education and rehabilitation for alcoholics. Today she holds the longest sobriety record in A.A. for her sex. There had been another earlier woman pioneer, Florence R., who had come among us in 1937. Her story was printed in the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. With great valor she had tried to help Fitz at Washington, but she became involved in the early wave of failure there and died of alcoholism.
Old-time midwesterners at the Convention could remember that while all this was going on in Akron and New York, certain candles were being lighted in Cleveland which presently sent up a flame that could be seen country-wide. A few older Clevelanders remembered how some of them had gone to the Akron meetings, then held in the home of Oxford Groupers T. Henry and Clarace Williams. There they had met Dr. Bob and Anne and had looked with wonder upon alcoholics who had stayed sober one and two and three years. They had met and listened to Henrietta Seiberling, the nonalcoholic who had brought Dr. Bob and me together in her house three years previously—one who had understood deeply and cared enough and who was already seen as one of the strongest links in the chain of events that Providence was unfolding. On other evenings, Clevelanders had gone to Dr. Bob’s Akron home, sitting with him and Anne over cups of coffee at their kitchen table. Eagerly they had absorbed knowledge of their problem and its solution and had breathed deeply of the remarkable spiritual atmosphere of the place. They became friends with old Bill D., A.A. number three. At other times Dr. Bob had taken them to St. Thomas Hospital, where they met Sister Ignatia, saw her at work, and in their turn talked to the newcomers on the beds. Returning to Cleveland, they began to dig up their own prospects and got to know for the first time the pains, the joys, and the benefits of A.A.’s Twelve Steps.
Clarence S. and his wife Dorothy were among the earliest contingent to come from Cleveland to the Akron meeting. By the early summer of 1939 a group had commenced to form around them in Cleveland where, by fall, they could count a score or more of promising recoveries.
At this point the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a series of pieces that ushered in a new period for Alcoholics Anonymous, the era of mass production of sobriety.
Elrick B. Davis, a feature writer of deep understanding, was the author of a series of articles that were printed in the middle of the Plain Dealer’s editorial page, and these were accompanied every two or three days by red-hot blasts from the editors themselves. In effect the Plain Dealer was saying, “Alcoholics Anonymous is good, and it works. Come and get it.”
The newspaper’s switchboard was deluged. Day and night, the calls were relayed to Clarence and Dorothy and from them to members of their little group. Earlier in the year, through the good offices of Nurse Edna McD. and the Rev. Kitterer, Administrator of Deaconess Hospital, an A.A. entry was made into this institution. But this one hospital could not begin to cope with the situation that now confronted Cleveland. For weeks and weeks A.A.’s ran about in desperate haste to make Twelfth Step calls on the swelling list of prospects. Great numbers of these had to be tossed into other Cleveland hospitals such as Post Shaker, East Cleveland Clinic, and several more. How the bills were paid nobody ever quite knew.
Sparked by Clarence and Dorothy, clergymen and doctors began to give great help. Father Nagle and Sister Victorine at St. Vincent’s Charity Hospital were meeting the new tide with love and understanding, as was Sister Merced at St. John’s. Dr. Dilworth Lupton, the noted Protestant clergyman, preached and wrote warmly about us. This fine gentleman had once tried to sober up Clarence, and when he saw A.A. do the job he was astonished. He published a pamphlet, widely used in Cleveland, entitled “Mr. X and Alcoholics Anonymous.” “Mr. X” of course was Clarence.
It was soon evident that a scheme of personal sponsorship would have to be devised for the new people. Each prospect was assigned an older A.A., who visited him at his home or in the hospital, instructed him on A.A. principles, and conducted him to his first meeting. But in the face of many hundreds of pleas for help, the supply of elders could not possibly match the demand. Brand-new A.A.’s, sober only a month or even a week, had to sponsor alcoholics still drying up in the hospitals.
Homes were thrown open for meetings. The first Cleveland meeting started in June, 1939, at the home of Abby G. and his wife Grace. It was composed of Abby and about a dozen others who had been making the journey to Akron to meet at the Williams home. But Abby’s group presently ran out of space. So one segment began to meet in the home of Cleveland’s financier, Mr. T. E. Borton, at his generous invitation. Another part of the group found quarters in a hall in the Lakewood section of Cleveland and became known as the Orchard Grove Group. And still a third offshoot of Abby’s meeting went under the name of the Lee Road Group.
These multiplying and bulging meetings continued to run short of home space, and they fanned out into small halls and church basements. Luckily the A.A. book had come off the press six months before, and some pamphlets were also available. These were the guides and time-savers that probably kept the hectic situation from confusion and anarchy.
We old-timers in New York and Akron had regarded this fantastic phenomenon with deep misgivings. Had it not taken us four whole years, littered with countless failures, to produce even a hundred good recoveries? Yet there in Cleveland we saw about twenty members, not very experienced themselves, suddenly confronted by hundreds of newcomers as a result of the Plain Dealer articles. How could they possibly manage? We did not know.
But a year later we did know; for by then Cleveland had about thirty
