Cleveland · 1939–1940
As the newspapers found AA, a big-league catcher among its members, the members had to decide how anonymous to be.
“Our growth made it plain that we could not be a secret society. But it was equally plain that we could not be a vaudeville circuit either.”
The society took its name from its book. After they left the Oxford Group, the New York members often called themselves a “nameless bunch of alcoholics,” and from there, Bill W. wrote, “it was only a step to the idea of ‘Alcoholics Anonymous.’” The book came out under that title in 1939.
At first, anonymity meant hiding. The book’s Foreword explained: “It is important that we remain anonymous because we are too few, at present to handle the overwhelming number of personal appeals which may result from this publication.” Most members, it added, were business or professional people who couldn’t carry on their work under such a flood. Bill later put it plainly: “anonymity was not born of confidence; it was the child of our early fears.”
Then came publicity. In the fall of 1939 a series of articles in Cleveland’s Plain Dealer ran that city’s membership, Bill wrote, “from a few dozen into hundreds overnight.” AA’s history of Akron puts it at about 15 to 100 in two weeks. In 1940 one of Cleveland’s members, Rollie H., a big-league catcher, told the newspapers he had quit drinking with AA’s help. The stories “brought in many new prospects,” Bill wrote. This was also, he said, “one of the first to arouse deep concern about our personal anonymity at the top public level.”
Meanwhile, some newcomers “wanted to shout about A.A. from the housetops, and did.” Some got drunk and “let their groups down with a bang.” Bill admitted he had broken anonymity himself.
By 1950 AA had written its answer into the Traditions: personal anonymity “at the level of press, radio, and films,” and anonymity as “the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions.”
It’s the spring of 1940. AA is almost five years old, and it’s in the newspapers again.
A big-league catcher named Rollie has quit drinking with the help of the Cleveland members, and he tells the reporters so. The stories bring in new people. They also worry Bill W. If a member in the public eye ever got drunk in public, the damage could fall on everyone.
Anonymity had started out as fear. The first members feared being swamped by appeals they could never keep up with. Now it was turning into something else.
Over the next ten years AA settled on a line. Members could tell family, friends, doctors, even employers. But no names in the papers, on the radio or in films.
Bill called it humility at work.
Where the line fell
“How anonymous should an A.A. member be?” Bill asked. Through the 1940s the members worked out an answer, level by level.
All from Bill’s account in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 1957.
Inside the group
Early members sometimes repeated what they had heard in confidence, and people were hurt and turned away. The lesson: a member’s “name, and his story too, had to be kept confidential, if he wished it to be.”
Bill called it “our first lesson”
Bill W., 1957
Close to home
Most newcomers told their families at once, then their doctors and ministers, and in time their employers. Such talk wasn’t within the strict letter of anonymity, Bill wrote, but it was “well within its spirit.”
Each member’s own choice
Bill W., 1957
In public
Groups opened some meetings to the public and sent speakers to clubs, churches and medical societies. “Provided reporters present were cautioned against the use of full names or pictures, the result was fine.”
No full names or pictures
Bill W., 1957
Press, radio, films
Here the line was hard: “anonymity—100 per cent anonymity—was the only possible answer.” If one self-appointed spokesman got drunk in public, “the damage might be irreparable.”
Tradition Eleven, 1950
Bill W., 1957
Humility at work
Bill came to see anonymity as “real humility at work.” Dr. Bob’s gravestone in Akron, he noted, “says not a word about Alcoholics Anonymous.”
For a closer look
The catcher who went public, the co-founder who was tempted to sign the book, and how the name was picked.
Rollie H. caught for the Cleveland Indians, and his drinking was well known. One baseball writer says the club arranged for AA members to see him over the winter before the 1940 season.
He revealed his AA membership to the press in 1940. He is usually counted as the first member to break anonymity at the national level.
Bill saw both sides. The newspaper stories “were sensational and they brought in many new prospects.” But at that height of publicity, if a member in the public eye “publicly got drunk,” he wrote, “the damage might be irreparable.”
Many members wanted the book called “The Way Out.” Bill saw what that title would allow: “then I could add my signature, ‘By Bill W.’!”
“In one dark moment I even considered calling the book ‘The B. W. Movement.’” His friends “promptly” slapped him down, and he came to see the idea as “a shameless piece of egotism.”
He admitted the pull lasted. Even after he obeyed the Traditions, “I still resisted inwardly,” he wrote, and “This was particularly true of anonymity.” He was plain about the past too: “At one time many numbers of A.A.’s were breaking anonymity, and I was one of them.” Dr. Bob, he wrote, was “a sort of spiritual ‘natural,’” and his example “did much to help me keep my own lid on.”
The words “Alcoholics Anonymous” turned up in the members’ talk “probably in October, 1938.” Bill: “We do not know who first used these words.”
The Akron and New York groups voted on titles for months, and “The Way Out” had a bare majority. Fitz M. checked the Library of Congress and reported back: twelve books called “The Way Out,” none called “Alcoholics Anonymous.” As the members said to themselves, “We sure aren’t going to make this book the thirteenth ‘Way Out.’”
In Cleveland, a group that began meeting in 1939 was, according to AA’s history of Akron, the first to call itself Alcoholics Anonymous.