Our Great Responsibility: A Selection of Bill W.'s General Service Conference Talks, 1951 – 1970

By Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

Made available to readers everywhere for the first time, Our Great Responsibility brings together 16 talks given by Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill W. over the span of two decades. With his characteristic humor and down-to-earth candor, Bill shares his thinking on myriad A.A. themes — the principles of A.A. service, the relationship between principles and personalities, even the origins and adaptability of the Twelve Steps — and reveals his willingness to entertain a broad, long view of Alcoholics Anonymous, open to change and growth.
Complementing the text are more than 60 archival photographs and other images from the General Service Office Archives, some never before published, as well as a concise history of the founding of A.A.’s General Service Conference, the mechanism for the Fellowship’s annual “group conscience.” We also hear from “friends of A.A.,” including Bill’s wife Lois, Dr. “Jack” Norris and Bernard Smith. Taken together, Our Great Responsibility provides both a window into how Alcoholics Anonymous has continued to grow over the years — and a roadmap for how it may move forward in unity.
Whether read for historical interest, for inspiration on the journey to recovery, or for a deeper look at the powerful principles upon which Alcoholics Anonymous functions today, Our Great Responsibility both educates and inspires readers today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
• Release date: May 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781644278857

Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (A.A.W.S.) is the corporate publishing arm of Alcoholics Anonymous, a worldwide fellowship that today numbers over two million individuals recovering from alcoholism. Best known as the publisher of the "Big Book," A.A.W.S.’s mission is to carry the message of recovery from alcoholism through print, ebooks, audio books, video, PSAs and more.

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Copyright © 2019

by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., including

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No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission of A.A.W.S., Inc. No part of this publication may be stored in a retrieval system, or copied, or shared, or transmitted in any form by any means, mechanical, via photocopying or recording (audio or video or otherwise) without permission of A.A.W.S., Inc.

A.A.W.S., Inc. gratefully acknowledges the cooperation of the Stepping Stones Foundation. Material from Grapevine is copyrighted by AA Grapevine, Inc. and is reprinted by permission of the publisher. The photograph of Dr. Carl Jung on page 116 appears courtesy of the Jung Family Archive. The photograph of Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick on page 39 appears courtesy of The Riverside Church Archives. Used by permission. Girl Reading the Post on page 67 is printed by permission of the Norman Rockwell Family Agency. Copyright ©1941 the Norman Rockwell Family Entities.

Second printing 2020.

This is A.A. General Service

Conference–approved literature.

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ISBN 978-1-644270-52-3

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Our

Great

Responsibility

A Selection of Bill W.’s

General Service Conference Talks,

1951 – 1970

Contents

History

The Road to the Conference

Preface to the Conference Talks

I. Origins

1952: We Face the Sunrise in High Hope

1966: Personality in a Framework of Principles

II. Responsibility

1963: The Group Conscience and the Trusted Servant

1965: Our Great Responsibility: The Guidance of A.A.’s World Affairs

III. Transformation

1953: Variations in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

1960: A.A. in an Era of Change

1961: A True and High and Constant Purpose

IV. Trust

1958: Constructive Use of Trouble

1959: Gratitude, Trust, Joy

V. Service

1956: Petition, Appeal, Participation and Decision: Four Principles of A.A. Service

1963: Standing Alone

1965: What Happened to Those Who Left?

VI. The Future

1955: Holding Us in Unity

1968: Hold On to Traditions

1969: Banishing Evil Spirits

VII. Other Voices

1966: Lois W

1953: Bernard Smith

1971: Dr. John Norris

Appendices

Appendix 1 – 1955:

Bill and the Night Visitors

Appendix 2 – 1956:

Bill and the Conference: The Reminder

Appendix 3 – 1970:

Bill’s Last Conference Talk, Opening Remarks

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

The Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous

The Twelve Traditions (The Long Form)

The Twelve Concepts for World Service

History

The Road to the Conference

Most of my life in the past fifteen or so years has been an effort to figure out, God knows with plenty of help, how this top function can be anchored to this movement — how to keep the cupola on the old A.A. barn so she just can’t blow off.

— Bill W., 1960 closing talk, General Service Conference

Aside from articulating A.A.’s Twelve Traditions, forged out of sometimes difficult experience, nothing Bill W. did during the 1940s showed his profound understanding of the needs of Alcoholics Anonymous more than his single-minded crusade to create the General Service Conference.

Alcoholics Anonymous had grown from a hundred members in 1938 to roughly 30,000 in the mid-1940s. At this time, A.A. was a loosely knit association of autonomous groups whose source of inspiration, decision making and information was Headquarters — the New York office now known as the General Service Office, or G.S.O. — where Bill labored with the help of his nonalcoholic secretary Ruth Hock¹ and a group of volunteers.

Seen here with Bill W., Ruth Hock was A.A.’s first secretary. She also typed most of the first draft of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The Alcoholic Foundation² (now the General Service Board), consisting in 1948 of five nonalcoholic and four alcoholic trustees, had been set up in 1938 to monitor the legal, business and financial end of A.A.

This had all worked fairly well, but as A.A. began its rapid expansion after the publication of Jack Alexander’s³ Saturday Evening Post article in 1941, Bill realized several things. One was that he, Dr. Bob and other oldtimers were, as he nicely put it, perishable. None of them was going to live forever; in fact, Dr. Bob would die in 1950 of cancer. Secondly, while important matters concerning A.A.’s policies were set by the Foundation, the trustees "didn’t want to get into the wider arena of what was

Jack Alexander’s empathetic article on Alcoholics Anonymous in the March 1941 issue of the Saturday Evening Post is largely credited with the fourfold growth of A.A. membership in one year.

After three years working at the General Service Office as a receptionist, in 1950 Nell Wing became Bill’s secretary, in which role she preserved many of A.A.’s foundational documents. When G.S.O. officially opened the Archives in 1975, Wing became its first archivist, a position in which she remained until 1982.

going on out in the groups," as archivist Nell Wing⁴ later wrote. There was no direct linkage between the membership and the Foundation’s trustees except Bill and Dr. Bob. This was a recipe for serious problems.

An annual meeting between good A.A. members

What, Bill later put it, would happen when death and disability finally took us few oldtimers out of the picture? Where would that leave the trustees and Headquarters? A single blunder on their part might cause a failure of confidence that could not be repaired.... It was evident that here was a worldwide movement that had no direct access to its principal service affairs.

Ultimately, Bill understood, the authority of A.A. needed to come from A.A. itself. The question was, how best to arrange this?

In April 1947, Bill drew up a proposal for the trustees entitled The Alcoholic Foundation of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow in which he wrote, Perhaps the best suggestion for closing the gap between our Alcoholic Foundation and the A.A. Groups is the idea of creating what we might call The General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous — an annual meeting between a fair number of good A.A. members, the trustees, and the staff of A.A. Headquarters and Grapevine.

In this memo, Bill went on to say that this proposed Conference should never have the slightest political complexion, a fond hope he would cite again and again during the course of the next several years. He wrote to a friend in A.A. in December 1950, The Conference is no world-shaking matter.... Sunday school teachers and bartenders alike seem to bring off such events without undue harm. Maybe we can, too.

You were certainly not diplomatic

No such luck. The resistance to Bill’s proposal came from several different directions. Most of the trustees did not see the need for a General Service Conference. In an April 1948 letter to Father Ed Dowling,⁵ Bill wrote, in some frustration, that the trustees did not like the idea of sharing their prerogatives with a conference... All of them talk a good line of democracy, but I fear some are totalitarians at heart. The harder Bill pushed, the harder they pushed back. Because of my recent mood of exasperated table-thumping, Bill said in the same letter to Father Dowling, [Horace C., an early trustee] and two of the Rockefeller men have resigned. One nonalcoholic trustee wrote Bill in August 1948, You were certainly not diplomatic in your manner of presentation and this has led to the injection of personalities, rumors, accusations, which have no place in this discussion.

Leonard Harrison,⁶ nonalcoholic chairman of the board, resigned over the issue, writing to Bill on February 18, 1948, that the Conference would interfere with the degree of isolation [needed] in dealing with the necessary ‘housekeeping,’ legal, and financial affairs in which the trustees were involved. Like a number of trustees, Harrison felt that the Conference would only encourage dissension and striving for power that might ultimately and fatally divide A.A. — exactly the opposite of what Bill intended. (Harrison, however, remained an admirer of Bill’s and would later return to the board as a supporter of the Conference.)

It wasn’t just the trustees. Henrietta Seiberling,⁷ the Oxford Group member who first introduced Bill to Dr. Bob, led an opposition group that included early A.A. Clarence S.⁸ of Cleveland, among others. Calling themselves the Orthodox Group, they claimed that Bill’s

Believing that the Conference would ultimately lead to fatal divisions within A.A., Leonard Harrison resigned as chair of the Alcoholic Foundation board over the issue. He would later return to the board as a supporter of the Conference.

Henrietta Seiberling, the Oxford Group member who introduced Bill to Dr. Bob, led an Ohio contingent that opposed the Conference. Calling themselves the Orthodox Group, they believed the Conference to be a cover-up for an attempt to consolidate A.A. power in New York.

Conference idea was a cover-up for a power grab to concentrate revenue and authority in New York. There should be no need, Seiberling wrote, for schemes of elections of delegates to advise trustees how to divide money, dispense largesse, make new principles, etc., and no need to receive debatable ‘legacies.’ Clarence S., who had always had a somewhat adversarial relationship with Bill, wrote to Seiberling that the Ohio oldtimers were 100 percent against any kind of organization or control, and resent any inference of authority vested in NY... Bill has pulled his schemes on a lot of groups... but he is out of his head trying to do so here.

Your presence and influence are badly needed

Some of the most stubborn resistance, perhaps surprisingly, came from A.A.’s co-founder, Dr. Bob. Bill’s adamant insistence on the Conference and the controversy this was stirring up among the trustees caused Bob to protest to Bill, in May 1948, I am just as interested in A.A. as you are, but am not 100 percent sure as to the wisest course to follow and the wisest ultimate set-up... perhaps ‘Easy Does It’ is the best course to follow.... Keep your shirt on for a bit, and remember that whatever happens, we love you a lot. Smithy.⁹

This fond note of rebuff did not deter Bill for long. In the summer of 1948, he wrote to Bob, Most of the alcoholics on the Board are due to get off at the year end. But... they will probably try to nominate as their successors people who think as they do.... Unless, of course, the groups set up loud cries for [a Conference] or you and I insist something be done.

It was shortly after this letter from Bill that Bob found out that he had cancer. He soon underwent several operations that sapped his strength, even as he was being pushed by both pro and anti-Conference advocates to

Program from the First International Convention (referred to as a conference on the program) in 1950, which featured both Dr. Bob and Bill as speakers.

take a stand. At the end of February 1949, with Bob’s health deteriorating, Bill wrote Bob a letter once again summarizing the need for a Conference. Most earnestly and prayerfully, he finished, I trust that you can and will lend us a hand. Your presence and influence are badly needed by all, especially me. Your calm disposition and firm support may mean everything.

That March, Bob wrote Bill, Have been quite painfully ill since you were here... do not have the feeling that this [the Conference] is a particularly guided thing to do now. Maybe I am wrong, but that is the way I feel.

The issue finally came to a head a few weeks after the First International Convention in Cleveland in July 1950, when Bill went to see Bob in Akron. As he recalls in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, Bill told Bob the good news that the Trustees would, in all probability, consent at last to the formation of a world service Conference. Bob, Bill said, was visibly relieved by my message, but he made no immediate comment. Bill continued to press, telling Bob that if we both passed off the scene without making any move, everybody would suppose that the present state of affairs met with our full approval.

Although a bit disingenuous on Bill’s part — there was no one who could doubt at this point where he stood on the matter and, after all, Bob was the one dying, not him — this argument had some effect on Bob. Bill, he said, it has to be A.A.’s decision, not ours. Let’s call the Conference. It’s fine with me.

Principles before personalities

Bob died on November 16, 1950, and the First General Service Conference was held — with the joint approval of both co-founders — in April 1951. Bernard Smith,¹⁰ the nonalcoholic chairman of the board of trustees (of whom Bill would later write, He had a remarkable faculty for persuasion and negotiation) persuaded the reluctant trustees to give the Conference a try. And so it was agreed that the Conferences would be held on an experimental basis from 1951 through 1954. In 1955, the results would be evaluated, and a decision would be made whether or not to make the Conferences permanent.

A.A. history has borne out the importance of Bill’s adamant ambition to hold a General Service Conference, but it may be that he felt Dr. Bob was never quite convinced. At the 1963 General Service Conference, in his talk on The Group Conscience and the Trusted Servant (see page 61), Bill has a very public conversation with Bob, almost thirteen years in the grave.

I used to go out and see Smithy about this, and I said, Gee, it’s awful to disagree with your best friend. I know you’re dubious about this; you’ve got a right to be. On the other hand, here is a board that has the custodianship of Tradition Two, and it’s out of line with it. And, even worse, there isn’t any linkage to the movement it serves, so the first boner down here will collapse it, particularly when you and I go. So let us not deceive ourselves, Bob: if we do nothing, we are still making history — at maybe the wrong time. Democratic society that this is, does it not have the inherent right to come and at least look at these business assets which have such a huge spiritual value? Doesn’t this movement have a right to send its representatives down here and decide whether they would like to become a conscience for this board and us founders? By this time the A.A. groups were all on this pattern; we were the last to conform. "Isn’t it true, Bob, that it would be better to have this Conference come down and fail, having given the

Some of the most stubborn resistance to the Conference came from A.A. co-founder Dr. Bob S. While he eventually came around to supporting the idea in 1950, Dr. Bob succumbed to cancer later that year, just five months before the inaugural General Service Conference in 1951.

movement a chance, than to remain silent? And later on comes a collapse, and future generations of A.A.s say, ‘Why didn’t they tell us? Why didn’t they give us a chance to try?’"

It is possible Bob needed less convincing than Bill thought. The Cleveland Convention was Bob’s last appearance before an A.A. gathering of any size, and it was there that he gave his short but memorable Farewell Talk, in which