One Drunk to Another Some Bum from St. Louis
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Illustration · An imagined archive table under a reading lamp: a box of folders, a bundle of old letters tied with string, and a typed letter lying open. Not drawn from a photograph.

1960 and after

Legacy

Bill W. said goodbye in the Grapevine, the letters they wrote each other became a book, and his last article followed the Twelve Steps past alcohol.

“He left a heritage of inspiration and grace which will be with us always.”

Bill W., “To Father Ed—Godspeed!” June 1960 · The Language of the Heart, 1988

Godspeed

Two months after Father Ed died, Bill W. said goodbye in the Grapevine, AA’s monthly magazine. “This was one of the most gentle souls and finest friends we AAs may ever know,” he wrote, and he printed again the introduction he had given Father Ed at St. Louis in 1955, with his memory of the night of sleet in 1940 (Stuff of the saints and A sense of presence tell them). The Big Book, which had quoted him in an appendix since 1955, added a note: “Father Ed, an early and wonderful friend of A.A., died in the spring of 1960.”

Early in 1961 Bill wrote to Carl Jung, and Jung’s answer, Pass It On says, came when Bill sorely needed it. His spiritual sponsor, who had understood his search as no one else had, was gone. Mr. Anonymous, in Number One Man, tells the letters.

Father Ed’s last article came out after he died. It followed the Twelve Steps out past AA, to drug addicts, gamblers, people with nervous troubles, writers of bad checks, and himself. Its list is laid out in Like a Gulf Stream.

The letters he and Bill had written each other were kept. Robert Fitzgerald, a Jesuit, wrote about them in the Catholic Digest in 1991 and printed many of them in The Soul of Sponsorship in 1995. Glenn C., an AA historian, posted a long draft biography in 2015, and Dawn Eden Goldstein, a theologian, published Father Ed: The Story of Bill W.’s Spiritual Sponsor in 2022.

On Dred Scott’s grave in Calvary Cemetery, the stone Father Ed asked for drew visitors who left Lincoln pennies on it for a long time afterward (Backing away from hell). Where Father Ed himself lies, at Florissant or at Calvary, has been disputed.

Listen Legacy About 1 minute

His last article

Like a Gulf Stream

In his last article, “A.A. Steps for the Underprivileged Non-A.A.,” Father Ed counted the people outside AA who were already using its Steps, and counted himself among them. “A.A. is like a Gulf Stream in the ocean of today’s life,” he wrote near the start. Here is his list, and some groups that weren’t on it.

The article came out after his death: the Grapevine’s editors said it was written for the anniversary book AA Today, and Glenn C. dates it to the July 1960 Grapevine. We know it only as Glenn C. quotes and sums it up, and most of the dates are his. Quotations are short excerpts.

  1. In his last article, 1960

  2. Begun 1953

    Narcotics Anonymous

    Its members used the Twelve Steps, he wrote, and with reason:

    “…alcohol is a narcotic.”

  3. Undated

    “Security Cloister” and “Average People”

    Two groups using the Steps for nervous and mental troubles. He asked:

    “If these steps can arrest one psychosis, why not other psychoses and neuroses?”

  4. The 1940s

    WANA, “We Are Not Alone”

    A self-help group of patients from Rockland State Hospital in New York, which grew into Fountain House. Glenn C. dates it to 1938; Fountain House’s history starts it in 1943.

  5. Begun 1957

    Gamblers Anonymous

    Started in Los Angeles. It put the word “gambling” where Step One had “alcohol.”

  6. Undated

    Check Writers Anonymous

    A group begun in prison by men who had written bad checks. Glenn C. could find only two newspaper stories about it.

  7. Undated

    Himself

    His overeating, and his smoking. Glenn C. dates his quitting to 1944, but Father Ed wrote in 1960:

    “…some ten years ago I arrested my own nicotinic addiction with the help of the A.A. Steps.”

  8. Beyond his list

  9. January 1960

    Overeaters Anonymous

    Founded less than three months before he died. Glenn C. doubts he knew of it.

  10. 1964 and 1971

    Neurotics Anonymous and Emotions Anonymous

    Bill W. had suggested a Neurotics Anonymous in 1956. Emotions Anonymous grew out of it.

  11. 1979

    CEA-HOW

    Compulsive Eaters Anonymous, begun in Phoenix, which Glenn C. says modeled itself on his article.

Democratized sanity

Near the end he said what AA had done for everyone else: “In moving their therapy from the expensive clinical couch to the low-cost coffee bar, from the inexperienced professional to the amateur expert, A.A. has democratized sanity.”

For a closer look

Go deeper

Where the letters went, what a spiritual sponsor is, and a last line still waiting to be checked.

The letters

Most of what Father Ed wrote to Bill reaches us through Robert Fitzgerald’s The Soul of Sponsorship: The Friendship of Fr. Ed Dowling, S.J. and Bill Wilson in Letters (Hazelden, 1995). Glenn C.’s draft quotes it often, with page references; we haven’t seen the book itself. Bill’s side is quoted in Pass It On, and Dawn Eden Goldstein’s 2023 article in Church Life Journal quotes Father Ed’s 1940 letters to AA’s office.

Glenn C. prints two of Father Ed’s letters to Sister Ignatia, from 1957 and 1960. He took them from photocopies in an Irish AA archive, and was told the originals are kept by her order in the United States. The second, written nine days before Father Ed died, urged her to come to AA’s convention at Long Beach that July.

A spiritual sponsor

Pass It On calls Father Ed Bill’s spiritual sponsor. In AA a sponsor is the member who helps a newcomer stay sober (You Had to Be Sponsored tells how the idea grew). Father Ed wasn’t an alcoholic, and Goldstein writes that his guidance helped Bill keep a different kind of sobriety: the inner steadiness he needed as AA’s demands on him grew.

He did the same for many others. AA’s newsletter called his work with drinkers “virtual sponsorship,” and every day, Goldstein says, people lined up outside his office at The Queen’s Work, from high society down to the homeless.

The last line

Robert Fitzgerald wrote in 1991 that Bill added a last line to Father Ed’s final article: “Father Ed, an early and wonderful friend of A.A., died as this last message went to press. He was the greatest and most gentle soul to walk this planet.”

Glenn C. prints the note twice, in two wordings. In the second, at the end of his text of the article, Father Ed is “the greatest and most gentle soul that I may ever know.” The note’s opening is word for word the Big Book’s footnote, and we haven’t seen it in the magazine itself. Until someone checks, these pages quote Bill’s June 1960 farewell instead.

Sources
  • The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “To Father Ed—Godspeed!” (June 1960).
  • AA Grapevine, June 1960: the editors’ note with Bill W.’s farewell, on his last article, as transcribed on the AA History Lovers list (message 1731).
  • Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book). Fourth edition, AA World Services, 2001. Appendix V, “The Religious View on A.A.,” and its note on his death.
  • Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter 24 (Jung’s letter, and Father Ed as Bill’s spiritual sponsor).
  • Glenn C., Father Ed Dowling: Bill Wilson’s Sponsor. Draft of May 1, 2015, posted in his archive at Indiana University South Bend. Chapter 41 (his letters to Sister Ignatia), chapter 42 (“A.A. Steps for the Underprivileged Non-A.A.,” 1960, and Bill’s note at its end) and chapter 43 (Bill’s farewell and the burial); the front matter (the note again) and the notes and bibliography (Robert Fitzgerald, The Soul of Sponsorship, Hazelden, 1995). Quotations are from the online text.
  • Robert Fitzgerald, S.J., “Father Ed and A.A.’s Bill W.” Catholic Digest, April 1991, as transcribed at silkworth.net. The letters and the last line.
  • Joyce Duriga, “One Jesuit priest’s effect on Alcoholics Anonymous.” Chicago Catholic, May 17, 2023, an interview with Dawn Eden Goldstein.
  • Dawn Eden Goldstein, “Father Ed and the First Catholic Outreach to Alcoholics Anonymous.” Church Life Journal, University of Notre Dame, March 24, 2023. His 1940 letters.
  • Dawn Eden Goldstein, “The Day Fr. Ed Dowling, SJ, Brought AA’s Bill Wilson to Meet the St. Louis Jesuits.” Jesuits Central and Southern, April 10, 2023. “Spiritual sponsor.”
  • “Father Ed Dowling — Bill W.’s Confidant and Friend.” Box 4-5-9, August–September 2006. “Virtual sponsorship.”
  • “Fountain House (nonprofit organization).” Wikipedia. WANA’s beginnings at Rockland in 1943.
  • Glenn C., Heroes of Early Black AA: Their Stories and Their Messages. Hindsfoot Foundation, 2017. Chapter 1 (Dred Scott’s grave).