Stick with the Winners:
Who Were They?
Cleveland A.A. Groups
Were Winners
Dick B.
©2014 Anonymous. All
rights reserved
In Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, Bill Wilson told the details of the Cleveland
A.A. groups as winners:
“Homes were
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.
We
old-timers in New York and Akron had regarded this fantastic phenomenon with
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 groups and several hundred members. . . . . Yes,
Cleveland’s results were of the best. Their results were in fact so good, and
A.A.’s membership elsewhere so small, that many a Clevelander really thought
A.A. had started there in the first place.
The
Cleveland pioneers had proved three essential things: the value of personal
sponsorship; the worth of the A.A. book in indoctrinating newcomers, and
finally the tremendous fact that A.A., when the word got around, could now
soundly grow to great size.
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: a
brief history of A.A., pages 21-22.
dickb@dickb.com
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