Illustration · An imagined office in Manhattan in the spring of 1996, emptied for the World Service Office’s move to Virginia Beach: taped cartons stacked and marked for the move, a cleared desk, bare shelves, and a postcard of a sunset still pinned to the bulletin board. Not drawn from a photograph.

A place to call our own

Priced out of Manhattan, Al-Anon’s World Service Office moved to Virginia Beach, bought land and built a home of its own, after years of argument over whether its Traditions allowed it.

“…the vote said that we would try to own property.”

Ric B., at the opening dinner of the 1996 World Service Conference · as printed in Many Voices, One Journey, 2011

A call before the vote

In a short break at Al-Anon’s 1994 World Service Conference, a delegate phoned a service sponsor, crying. The delegate knew how the Area back home wanted the vote cast, “but I felt I had new information.”

The vote was on whether Al-Anon should own a building. Many members had grown up believing, as Ric B. said later, that Tradition Six meant Al-Anon could never own property under any circumstances. “Period. End of discussion.”

The sponsor, the delegate remembered, answered very graciously.

“You are our trusted servant, and you and your Higher Power will make the right decision.”

A service sponsor, to a delegate before the vote, 1994, as the delegate remembered it · Many Voices, One Journey

Al-Anon had grown up beside AA in New York. By 1990 it could no longer afford Manhattan: literature sales were down, the office was running at a deficit, and its lease would end in 1996.

MoreAn attic on 24th Street

The family groups first met at AA’s clubhouse on 24th Street in the 1940s. In 1952 Al-Anon’s first paid office was an unheated attic in the same building, and its first Conferences met in New York at the same time as AA’s.

In 1990 a study panel named money as the main reason to move.

A move raised a harder question: rent again, or buy? In 1991 the Conference voted that owning property was consistent with the Traditions, and a year later a motion to take that back failed (six votes, below).

MoreThree cities

From a pool of 320 cities, the Relocation Committee came down in October 1993 to three: Tampa, Norfolk and Dayton. It recommended Norfolk, with Dayton as the backup. Consultants had reckoned that a move to any of six test cities would save $4.5 million to $9.5 million in ten years.

The relocation fund’s goal was $2 million. Members gave it $77,129 in 1993.

At the 1994 Conference the talk about moving went on for more than four hours, and ended with a vote for the Norfolk area. Then the talk about owning went on for more than four hours too.

Some delegates said groups in their Areas would hold back their contributions if Al-Anon bought. Others hoped every group would trust the group conscience and support whatever was decided.

As the talk wound down, a delegate sent a note asking for time to meditate and say the Serenity Prayer. The lights were lowered, the chairperson of the board read the motion softly into the microphone, and the members stood and prayed.

The delegate who had phoned a sponsor voted for the motion while “tears dropped onto my ballot.” Motion 12, to buy property on a fifteen-year trial, carried 79 to 19. The Board could sell at any time if owning distracted the office from its purpose.

Illustration · A ballot marked Yes, with tears on it, as one delegate remembered voting at the 1994 Conference. The ballot is imagined; not drawn from a photograph.

Not every member was glad. In Minnesota a member who had chaired a district workshop on owning had hoped the groups would refute the whole idea. She pictured special appeals to fix a leaky roof.

When the motion carried, she wrote, she was devastated. Then she took an inventory, and found that the alcoholism in her life had left her unable to trust.

In 1996 she went to the open house at Al-Anon’s new home and watched the cornerstone unveiled. Fifteen years later she still had a thick, dusty folder on her desk labeled “Property Ownership.”

Illustration · The dusty folder a member in Minnesota still kept, fifteen years after the vote she had opposed. Imagined; not drawn from a photograph.

Al-Anon bought 5.2 acres on Corporate Landing Parkway in Virginia Beach and broke ground on July 24, 1995. Staff began moving on May 1, 1996, and the World Service Office opened in its new home on June 1.

Before the move, a member of the New York staff pinned up a postcard of a sunset with the words “Change, the one thing in life that is constant,” and remembered doing a little of both: embracing the move, and going kicking and screaming.

Thirteen of the New York staff moved with the office. Portraits of Lois W. and Anne B. hung in the lobby, and it felt, one of the thirteen wrote, as if the office at long last had a home instead of a landlord.

About 500 members came to the open house on October 12. The land and building cost nearly $3 million, and members gave more than $500,000 toward the move.

Listen A place to call our own About 1 minute

Vote by vote

Six votes on moving and owning

How the Conference voted on owning property and on where to move, from a first show of hands in 1984 to the end of the trial in 2011. In each bar the colored part is the votes on the side of moving or owning, the gray part the votes on the other side, and the pale part abstentions or void ballots; each row says what a yes meant.

Counts and the 1984 question from Many Voices, One Journey (2011), which quotes the Conference summaries; it gives no count for 1991. 2011 from Al-Anon’s own timeline and blog (al-anon.org), which give no count either. Quotations are short excerpts.

1984
59 yes · 25 no

A sense of the Conference

A delegate asked, “Does the Conference feel it is against the spirit of the Traditions for the WSO and company to own its own building?” Several delegates who had polled their Areas found opinion nearly unanimous against owning. By a show of hands, not binding: 59 yes, that it was against the spirit of the Traditions; 25 no; 10 abstaining.
1991
Carried

Consistent with our Traditions

After long discussion, the Conference carries a motion that ownership of property by Al-Anon Family Groups is “consistent with our Traditions.” Al-Anon’s history gives no count.
1992
13 yes · 84 no

Take it back?

A motion from the floor to rescind the 1991 vote fails: 13 yes, to rescind; 84 no; 2 void.
1994
84 yes · 14 no

Norfolk

On where to move, not on owning: the Conference accepts the Norfolk, Virginia area for the World Service Office, with Dayton, Ohio as the backup.
1994
79 yes · 19 no

Motion 12

The purchase of property, for a fifteen-year trial, with the Board free to sell at any time if owning distracted the office from its purpose.
2011
Carried

Motion 6

The trial ends and the Conference authorizes owning the property, with the mortgage already paid.

Try it first

In 1984, 59 hands said yes when a delegate asked whether owning a building went against the spirit of the Traditions. Ten years later, 79 Conference members voted to try it for fifteen years, and in 2011 the Conference ended the trial and kept the building.

For a closer look

Go deeper

What the Tradition says about property, how the motion got its number, and the office’s last two years in New York.

Tradition Six

Al-Anon’s Sixth Tradition, like AA’s, says its groups should never endorse, finance or lend their name to an outside enterprise, “lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary spiritual aim.” Many members read it as forbidding Al-Anon to own property at all. At the 1993 Conference some members relayed fears from their Areas that the question would do “irreparable damage by splitting the fellowship.”

Others read it differently. The 1994 vote, Ric B. told the 1996 Conference as he was about to become Executive Director, had not said Al-Anon could own property, only that it would try for fifteen years to see whether it could without affecting one Step, one Tradition or one Concept; the Board, he said, would walk away from the building before it would destroy the fellowship. In 2010 a Conference member read the Tradition again: the World Service Office was not an outside enterprise. “‘Outside’ is the key word!”

So that the building wouldn’t distract the office’s staff or its Executive Committee, a committee was formed in 1995 to manage it. Owning would cut costs by 25 to 35 percent a year, the Relocation Committee showed, and Virginia exempted Al-Anon from property tax. In 2009 the committee’s fourth report found no harm to the office’s finances or to its focus.

Number twelve

During one of the last breaks in 1994, the chairperson of the board remembered, a Conference member asked how the discussion was going. The chairperson sensed God at work in the room but couldn’t tell which way it was moving people, and guessed the vote would be 75 percent one way or the other.

Only that evening, when the result was announced, did the chairperson turn to the Executive Director and ask which motion it had been. No one had tried to make it number twelve, the chairperson wrote: “it just turned out that way.”

Two issues in one envelope

In its last two years in New York the office cut wherever it could. Nearly a fifth of its budget went to rent and running costs, and the rent couldn’t be bargained down. Forum subscribers were angry to get two issues in one envelope; newsletters came out less often; staff who left weren’t replaced. Myrna H., the Executive Director, chose to retire rather than move.

In Virginia Beach the staff came from all over the Conference’s Areas instead of from around New York, and four of them were past delegates. One of the new staff found 35 boxes waiting on the first day. Ric B., who had chaired the Board, began as Executive Director on June 1, 1996.

Sources

Many Voices, One Journey. Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, 2011. Chapter 8, “Defining the boundaries, 1981–1985” (the 1984 question and show of hands); chapter 9, “Looking within, 1986–1990” (the relocation study, 1990); chapter 10, “A place to call our own, 1991–1995” (New York, the 1991 and 1992 votes, the consultants, the cities, the relocation fund, the 1994 Conference and Motion 12, the delegate and the chairperson of the board, the 1993 fears, the Minnesota member, Corporate Landing Parkway, the property committee, tax exemption, the groundbreaking); chapter 11, “A new beginning, 1996–2000” (Ric B. in 1996, Myrna H., the move, the staff, the cost, the open house); chapter 13, “Planting seeds for new growth, 2006–2010” (the 2009 report, the last mortgage payment, the 2010 discussion, the Tradition’s wording).
Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Al-Anon timeline (2011, the end of the trial and the mortgage burning) and “Mortgage Burning” (Motion 6), al-anon.org.
Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Al-Anon Faces Alcoholism, 2026 (the office’s address).

A call before the vote

Six votes on moving and owning

A sense of the Conference

Consistent with our Traditions

Take it back?

Norfolk

Motion 12

Motion 6

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