Illustration · An imagined hotel meeting room in New York in April 1961, before a session of Al-Anon’s first World Service Conference: a long table with name cards for four of the areas that sent delegates that year, glasses, papers and microphones, empty chairs behind it, and a clock on the wall. Not drawn from a photograph.

The first Conference

Twelve delegates in 1961 and forty-nine by 1965: how Al-Anon’s groups came to have a say in their own world services.

“…your services … must now be made a function of Al-Anon as a whole.”

Bill W., at the opening of Al-Anon’s first World Service Conference · as printed in Many Voices, One Journey, 2011

On behalf of AA

In New York in April 1961, after a short welcome, Bill W. gave the first talk at Al-Anon’s first World Service Conference. He spoke for ten minutes. On behalf of AA, he brought the families “our deep regret” for what the drinking days had imposed on them.

Most of the talk was about what the Conference would do for Al-Anon. The people running its office had appointed themselves, he said, because that was the only way they could start. Each yearly meeting from now on, “be they dull, be they controversial,” was an insurance policy for Al-Anon’s future.

Lois W. had raised the idea three years before, at her yearly lunch for the wives of AA’s delegates. The time had come, she said, for Al-Anon as a whole to see the importance of yearly Conferences of its own.

In 1960, at AA’s convention in Long Beach, California, 400 Al-Anon members approved a plan for a Conference without a dissent. One of them remembered a thrill running through the room, and knowing she was there at the start of something big.

MoreThree years on trial

The plan was a trial, for three years. North America was split into four quarters with about the same number of groups, and in each the three states or provinces with the most groups sent a delegate. Each quarter would send three more the next year, and three more the year after.

The groups, when asked, voted for it overwhelmingly.

After Bill W.’s talk, a moment of silence and the Serenity Prayer, Sue L. called the roll: twelve delegates, from California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, and from British Columbia and Ontario.

Illustration · The twelve delegates of the first Conference, in the order its summary lists them, on an imagined roll-call sheet. Not drawn from a photograph.

The delegates could speak and vote, with the directors who ran the office. Advisory Board members and representatives of areas that would send delegates later could speak but not vote; observers could do neither. Of everyone there, by the count in Al-Anon’s history, seven were men (Go deeper, below).

MoreSue L.’s notes

Sue L., a board member from the New York area, chaired that first Conference and every one after it through 1968. It was she who had written down what Lois said at the lunch in 1958.

That first year the delegates voted to have Conference Approved Literature. Groups were printing pamphlets that weren’t always in line with Al-Anon, Lois said, some with a local slant and some with a religious one. Groups could still print their own, for local use.

They argued longer over the Bible. Al-Anon’s manual for groups suggested “a chapter from the Bible” as a topic for a meeting, and Ontario’s delegate said Bible readings caused controversy and turned meetings toward religion.

The board’s vice president agreed: walking into a first meeting and hearing a chapter of the Bible read, “I would never have gone back.” Another director wanted the suggestion kept, since there was so much in the Bible that could help in everyday life.

Lois didn’t mind an occasional chapter, applied to a member’s own life. More than that was another matter.

“If we did that at every meeting, it wouldn’t be Al-Anon.”

Lois W., at the first World Service Conference, 1961 · Many Voices, One Journey

The Conference left the manual as it was, and the choice to each group’s leader. The argument over what to read at meetings went on for years (Go deeper).

Illustration · An open Bible beside Al-Anon’s 1960 manual for groups, which suggested a chapter from the Bible as a topic for a meeting. Imagined; not drawn from a photograph.

In 1963 the delegates voted unanimously to make the Conference permanent: “The conscience of Al-Anon on the North American continent now has a voice.”

MoreHiding the title

At the 1962 Conference, members reported that some alcoholics at home objected to the title of Al-Anon’s book, Living with an Alcoholic. In Massachusetts, groups hid the title when they handed the book to a newcomer.

A member of the Advisory Board suggested a new one: “Living with a person who drinks a little—who claims he isn’t an alcoholic.”

By 1965 there were 49 delegates, and Al-Anon’s second book, Al-Anon Faces Alcoholism, with a section by professionals, was ready for AA’s convention in Toronto.

Listen The first Conference About 1 minute

Year by year

Five Conferences

Each dot is a delegate. The plan started small and added delegates every year; beside each count is what that year’s Conference did.

Delegate counts from the Conference summaries of 1961 to 1965, which Al-Anon posts at al-anon.org; for 1962, the delegates present. The rest from the summaries and Many Voices, One Journey (2011). Quotations are short excerpts.

1961
12 delegates

On trial

Votes to have Conference Approved Literature; any group can still publish whatever it wants locally. Reading from the Bible at meetings is left to the leader.
1962
22 delegates

Literature by name

Accepts the office’s pamphlets and book as Conference Approved, and puts four delegates on the Literature Committee. Talks over how to answer Black families who write in from places with no interracial group (Go deeper).
1963
36 delegates

Permanent

Votes unanimously to make the Conference permanent. By 30 votes to 17, limits members’ gifts to the office to $100 a year, and bequests to $100.
1964
44 delegates

A charter

The first permanent Conference. Lois W. brings an outline for a Conference Charter, for the delegates to study and suggest changes.
1965
49 delegates

Trustees

A Board of Trustees has replaced the directors. Al-Anon Faces Alcoholism is ready for AA’s convention in Toronto, and, Al-Anon’s history says, the Conference asks groups to use only its approved literature.

A voice of its own

In 1961 twelve delegates sat with the people who had always run Al-Anon from New York. By 1965 there were 49, from 41 states and every Canadian province, and what the office printed went out with the Conference’s approval.

For a closer look

Go deeper

The men at the first Conference, a question about race in 1962, and how the Conference came to ask groups to read only its own literature.

Seven men

As Al-Anon’s history counts them, seven men were among the delegates, directors, representatives, observers and advisers at the first Conference. One member asked for literature from the office for husbands, “so that they will feel that they have at least one piece for themselves.” California’s delegate said there were many women in AA but few men in Al-Anon, and asked how to make the program interesting to husbands.

The Literature Committee was already preparing “a pamphlet for male Al-Anons,” that year’s summary says. Men from “stag” groups in California and New York helped write it, and The Stag Line came out early in 1962. Al-Anon’s 2009 membership survey, its history reports, found that about 15 percent of the members at meetings in the United States and Canada were men.

No interracial group

In 1962 the Conference took up a question: how could the office help Black families who wrote in from places with no interracial group? Segregation was still a way of life in parts of the United States, Al-Anon’s history says, and in some Al-Anon groups. There were groups of Black members in New York City, Newark and several Southern cities.

The office sent each inquiry to the nearest group, and Henrietta S., who ran it, said they couldn’t always tell whether an inquirer was Black. Sometimes a group would write back that it hadn’t contacted her, because she lived in the Black part of town. Should the office, in some places, just say there was no group? North Carolina’s delegate said Black groups had been represented at the state’s Assembly. A board member said Black people in the South knew their restrictions, and the office should send literature and say there was no interracial or Black group in their area; a voice from the floor, speaking up for the Southern states, said alcoholism “respects no color.” One board member wanted a motion that Al-Anon had no requirements for membership. Another said groups were autonomous, and some already limited membership in other ways, to AA wives or to men; a third answered that Al-Anon as a whole would be affected if groups set conditions.

That year’s summary records no decision, only two suggestions: send the usual letter and refer the inquiry to the nearest group, registering her as a loner if that group couldn’t take her; or pass her name to the delegate to find the right group. Al-Anon’s history, written in 2011, says the Conference concluded that the office should make no racial distinctions and would quietly ask delegates to help everyone find a meeting. (The Only Requirement tells how AA’s first Black members found groups.)

Only approved literature

The first Conference also reached a consensus, its summary records, that only Al-Anon’s own pamphlets and books be displayed at meetings. In November 1962 the Forum explained why literature labeled Al-Anon had to agree with itself. Imagine one pamphlet saying Al-Anon was open to relatives and friends of anyone with a drinking problem, and another saying it was only for the husbands and wives of AA members in good standing. A group was free to make that rule for itself, but printed literature headed Al-Anon couldn’t say both.

In 1965, Al-Anon’s history says, the Conference asked groups to use only Conference Approved Literature (that year’s summary speaks of a vote two years before), and the letters that came back were mixed. “It will take time to persuade the groups,” Alice B. reported.

Sources

Many Voices, One Journey. Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, 2011. Chapter 3, “Extending the hand of Al-Anon, 1956–1960” (Lois W.’s lunch of 1958, Sue L., the 1960 plan and the vote at Long Beach, and a member’s memory of it); chapter 4, “Participation is the key to harmony, 1961–1965” (the first Conference and who was there, Bill W.’s talk, Conference Approved Literature and the Bible, the seven men, the 1962 talk of the book’s title, the 1962 discussion of inquiries, the Forum’s article of November 1962, the 1963 vote and gift limit, the charter, Al-Anon Faces Alcoholism, the 1965 suggestion on literature).
Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, World Service Conference summaries: 1961 (the welcome, Bill W.’s ten-minute talk, the roll of delegates, voice and vote, Conference Approved Literature, the Bible and what was displayed at meetings, the pamphlet for men), 1962 (delegates present, the book’s title, the suggestions on inquiries), 1963 (the permanent Conference, the limit on gifts), 1964 (the 1963 vote, unanimous; the first permanent Conference; the charter) and 1965 (delegates, the trustees, literature) (al-anon.org).
World Service Office, Highlights of the World Service Conference, 2026 (al-anon.org).

On behalf of AA

Five Conferences

On trial

Literature by name

Permanent

A charter

Trustees

Go deeper