Illustration · A kitchen table at night: a manuscript in a cardboard cover, two typed chapters held with a clip, an opened envelope and a letter half written. Not drawn from a photograph; the blue cover follows Lois W.’s memory of the loan copies, bound in red or blue cardboard.
A mother’s letter, two chapters in the mail, and the first drunk to try AA’s book with no one beside him.
“It was our initial effort to help others through the book alone.”
By mail
In 1938 a mother somewhere in the far West was looking through a small medical journal when an article on alcoholism, written by a doctor, caught her eye. Her only son had been drinking for years. She wrote to the doctor, and the doctor passed her letter on to Alcoholics Anonymous, the ex-drunks in the East who were writing a book. Lois W. later remembered that he had heard of AA through Dr. William D. Silkworth.
“About a hundred men, here in the east, have found a solution for alcoholism that really works,” the reply began. With it went a rough copy of the book’s first two chapters. No answer came. They wrote again and sent a whole copy of the manuscript, one of the loan copies they were circulating before publication. It was, they told her, the first time they had tried to help an alcoholic “at long distance.”
Her son had started drinking in 1917, at eighteen, and gone to France as an Army sergeant. Then came the Marine Corps, where he made gunnery sergeant and drank the rank away; several years in China; jobs selling cars and real estate; two stays in state hospitals, at his own request, and two private cures. By 1938 he worked in a medical ward at a county hospital, among patients with the DTs, the shaking and visions of alcohol withdrawal.
He read the two chapters while he was on a binge. A friend with a veterans’ group arranged a bed for him at a state sanitarium, where he spent most of the time from September 1, 1938, to January 15, 1939, and had his appendix out besides. He told people he had the flu. When he came home, the book was waiting. He read it, he wrote, “so as not to miss anything,” and he followed its suggestions.
He wrote six weeks later. He was sober, the sanitarium’s manager had asked him to talk with some of its patients, and he asked for one thing more: “Would you put me in touch with some ‘A.A.s’ out here?” The letter reached New York just before the book went to press. Bill W., Lois remembered, was so excited about “the first A.A. ‘loner’” that he wired for permission to print it. In April 1939 it ran at the back of the first edition as “Lone Endeavor,” for others “who live in distant places.”
What came next isn’t in the book. Jim B., a New York member in 1939, wrote some years later of a bus ride east that ended badly, and later accounts name the man as Pat C. of Los Angeles. The story appears only in the first printing.
ListenLone EndeavorAbout 1 minute
It’s 1938, somewhere in the far West. A mother leafing through a medical journal finds an article on alcoholism, and writes to the doctor about her son. Her letter ends up with the ex-drunks in the East who are writing a book. They mail her two rough chapters. Silence. Then they send a copy of the whole manuscript, and wait.
Her son has been drinking since he was eighteen: the Army, the Marines, China, two state hospitals. He reads the chapters while he’s on a binge, arranges a stay at a sanitarium, and comes home in January to find the book waiting. Six weeks later he writes to New York. He’s sober, and he has followed its suggestions. He asks them to put him in touch with some AAs out there.
They print his letter in the book as Lone Endeavor, their first try at helping a drunk through the book alone. What happened next, the book doesn’t say.
Who told it, and when
Five tellings
His letter has been told five ways: in the book that printed it, in an early New York member’s history, in Lois W.’s memoir, in AA’s reprint of the old stories, and in histories passed around among members. Only the member’s history and the later ones say what happened to him next.
Five labels, in the order each was set down. In the book: the first edition, with his letter. A member’s history: Jim B.’s, written by 1947 and never published by AA; the site reads it from a transcription. A memoir: Lois W.’s, published by Al-Anon. AA’s books: AA’s 2003 reprint. Told later: histories shared among members online, which draw on letters in the archives without printing them.
In the book
The first edition, 1939
How he heard
His mother read a doctor’s article in a small medical journal and wrote to its author, who isn’t named.
Who he was
No name, no town; the book places him in “the far west.” By his own count he started drinking at eighteen in 1917, so he was about forty.
What came next
Two telegrams. New York asked to print his letter “AS FIRST EXAMPLE OF WHAT MIGHT BE ACCOMPLISHED WITHOUT PERSONAL CONTACT.” His answer came the next day: “PERMISSION GRANTED WITH PLEASURE. LOTS OF LUCK.”
A member’s history
Jim B., by 1947
How he heard
A loan copy reached “a patient in a psychopathic hospital in California.” Jim says nothing of the mother or the doctor.
Who he was
No name. Jim has him writing the story himself, while he was still in California.
What came next
The New York groups “passed the hat and sent for him to come East as an example.” When members met him at the bus station he was drunk, and “as far as I know, never came out of it.” Jim was a New York member at the time. The copyist of his history warns that his memory of some other events doesn’t agree with better accounts.
A memoir
Lois W., 1979
How he heard
Through Dr. Silkworth, who treated Bill W. at Towns Hospital.
Who he was
“A young man in California,” who had stayed sober alone for some time on the manuscript.
What came next
Bill wired for permission to print the letter, and got it. She says nothing about the man after that.
AA’s books
AA’s reprint, 2003
How he heard
As in 1939. Experience, Strength and Hope reprints the stories dropped from the Big Book over the years, this one among them.
Who he was
No name, as in 1939.
What came next
One footnote: “This story appeared only in first printing of first edition.” It gives no reason.
Told later
Members’ histories, undated
How he heard
As in 1939, with a date for his letter: about February 27, 1939.
Who he was
Pat C., of Los Angeles. They say Ruth Hock wrote the story’s opening from the letters.
What came next
Members took up a collection for a bus ticket to bring him to New York. When the bus came in, he wasn’t among the passengers getting off; the driver said he was asleep under the back seat, drunk. The story was dropped from the second printing. Later Kaye M., who started the first AA meeting in Los Angeles, wrote that he was going to meetings again and had been sober about a year. One version dates her letter December 19, 1939, and then calls it a 1944 letter.
The first loner
The book printed his letter as proof it could work with no one in the room. His letter asked to be put in touch with someone. What came next was first set down within eight years, by a member who was in New York then, and never in his own words.
For a closer look
Go deeper
Which printing carried the story; what the book itself told the reader far from any member; and who wrote the words around his letter.
Which printing?
“This story appeared only in first printing of first edition.”
Experience, Strength and Hope, 2003.
The first printing came off the press in April 1939, at the Cornwall Press, and sold slowly. “Lone Endeavor” came at the back of the book.
The second printing waited until March 1941, after the Saturday Evening Post article brought a flood of orders. By a collector’s printing-by-printing history, it dropped “Lone Endeavor” and put a page on the fellowship’s growth in its place.
The members’ histories tie the change to the bus ride. AA’s own note in its 2003 reprint says only that the story was in the first printing and no other.
The book’s answer
The book’s last chapter, “A Vision for You,” speaks to a reader like him. It imagines him saying, “But I will not have the benefit of contact with you who write this book.” Its answer: “We cannot be sure.” It tells him to rely on God, who will show him how to make the fellowship he wants where he is.
The loan copy he read added a footnote there, pointing to the Alcoholic Foundation, AA’s board of trustees: “It may be we shall be able to carry on a limited correspondence.” Its appendix expected that many readers would want to write.
He was one of the first who did. The words of “A Vision for You” are still in the Big Book today.
Who wrote the frame?
“…those warm letters Ruth had written to him when he was a loner…”
Bill W., in 1957, on what old-timers remembered.
Only the middle of “Lone Endeavor” is his letter. The opening tells the mother’s side in AA’s voice and quotes the two letters sent to her, and the close prints the two telegrams.
The members’ histories say Ruth Hock wrote it from the letters that passed between the office, the mother and her son. She wasn’t an alcoholic. She was the secretary who typed the book’s chapters in Newark, and she answered most of the mail.
Bill W. remembered how many old-timers, at the 1955 convention in St. Louis, were grateful for her letters in the years when each of them was a loner somewhere far from a group.
Sources
Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book), first edition. Works Publishing, 1939. “Lone Endeavor” and “A Vision for You.”
The pre-publication manuscript of early 1939 (a loan copy), from a transcription. The footnote to “A Vision for You” and the appendix “The Alcoholic Foundation.”
Experience, Strength and Hope: Stories from the First Three Editions of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA World Services, 2003. “Lone Endeavor,” page 140, footnote.
Lois Remembers. Al-Anon Family Groups, 1979. Chapter 10, “The Big Book.”
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. The opening chapter, on the 1955 convention at St. Louis.
Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book), fourth edition. AA World Services, 2001. The closing page, on writing to AA’s office.
Jim B., “The Evolution of Alcoholics Anonymous,” a history written by 1947, as posted to the AA History Lovers list (message 1705, March 2004). For the bus trip.