New York, Philadelphia and Little Rock · 1939–1941
Letters poured into a post office box in lower Manhattan, and every one got a personal answer, even from towns with no AA to send anyone to.
“Form letters wouldn’t be enough. Every single one must have an understanding personal reply.”
By 1939, AA’s address was Box 658 at the Church Street Annex, a post office in lower Manhattan. That September, Liberty magazine ran “Alcoholics and God,” and about 800 letters came in. Ruth Hock, the office’s secretary, who wasn’t an alcoholic, answered them, as By the Carload tells. “Each letter was answered individually,” she wrote to Bill W. years later. The book was mentioned, but she tried to make clear “it was not necessary to purchase the book,” and she sent each writer to the nearest group or member.
Often there was no one to send them to. In late 1939, AA had groups in only a handful of cities. “When alcoholics or their families showed continued interest, we kept on writing,” Bill recalled. The office kept lists of prospects, town by town, and gave them to members who traveled for business. New York wrote to those travelers constantly, and put out a directory of groups for them.
In Philadelphia, George S. was in bed, drinking whiskey for his depression and taking laudanum for his colitis, when the Liberty issue arrived. The article hit him so hard, Bill wrote, that he “went ex-grog and ex-laudanum instantly.” He wrote to New York, and New York gave his name to Jim B., a member who sold for a living and traveled that territory. Philadelphia’s first meeting, in 1940, was held at George’s home. Bill called him “one of A.A.’s first loners.”
In Little Rock, Arkansas, two drunks read the same article and wrote for the book. The copy sent to one of them, Harlan N., came back: he was drinking. After Time reported John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s dinner for AA in February 1940, the other, Sterling C., wrote again and got his. In late May 1940 they and a third man, Bud G., met as a group in an insurance office at Markham and Main. AA remembered it as the first group formed “solely by mail.”
Then, on March 1, 1941, the Saturday Evening Post printed Jack Alexander’s article on AA. Letters and telegrams hit Box 658 “first in hundreds and then in thousands,” Bill wrote in 1957; in 1955 he had counted six thousand. Volunteers with typewriters filled the top floor of the clubhouse on West 24th Street, as Lois W. remembered. They were tempted to use form letters. “But experience had shown that this would not do at all.” The groups were asked for a dollar a member a year to pay for full-time help, and within weeks the office caught up.
Soon the pins on the office’s wall map showed new groups springing up “like mushrooms,” most with no experienced member at all. Their troubles came in the mail too. “By mail we retailed the experience of the older centers on to them,” Bill wrote. Out of those letters, a few years later, came the Twelve Traditions.
It’s March 1941, at a post office box in lower Manhattan, Box 658. The Saturday Evening Post has just printed a story about Alcoholics Anonymous, and letters and telegrams are pouring in by the thousands. Many come from towns with no AA at all.
Volunteers with typewriters crowd the top floor of a clubhouse on West Twenty-Fourth Street. They’re tempted to send form letters. They don’t. Every letter gets a personal answer.
It’s how the office has worked since 1939: answer each one, name the nearest member if there is one, and keep writing if there isn’t. In Little Rock, Arkansas, two drunks had written for the book after a magazine article. By May 1940, three men were meeting in an insurance office: AA’s first group formed by mail.
One letter, start to finish
How a letter from a town with no AA could end in a meeting, step by step, with a case from the books for each step.
Steps as Bill W. described them in 1955 and 1957 and Ruth Hock in her letter of 1955. The Little Rock dates are from an unpublished history drafted for AA in 1985.
1939–1941
About 800 after Liberty magazine’s article in September 1939. Hundreds more after John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s dinner for AA in February 1940. Thousands after the Saturday Evening Post in March 1941.
Into Box 658
Bill W., 1955 and 1957
From 1939
Ruth Hock wrote back to each one, with a leaflet about the book. She named the nearest group or member, if there was one, and made it clear that no one had to buy the book.
No form letters
Ruth Hock, 1955
1940
When a writer kept writing, so did New York. Names went on lists, town by town, for members who traveled on business. George S.’s name went to Jim B., a salesman whose territory took in Philadelphia.
A member comes to call
Bill W., 1955 and 1957
May 1940
Where no member could go, the book and the letters had to do it all. In Little Rock, Arkansas, three men with no member to visit them began meeting in an insurance office.
The first group formed solely by mail
Bill W., 1957; the 1985 history
For a closer look
How many letters there were; a city that grew up on the book and the mail; and a group that read the book its own way.
For the Liberty article of 1939, Bill gave about 800 letters. An Akron member, Ernie G., remembered reading of 300 or 400; Twelve postcards sets the two side by side.
For the Saturday Evening Post of 1941, Bill wrote in the Grapevine in 1955 that six thousand appeals came. In his history two years later, they came “first in hundreds and then in thousands.”
Ruth Hock gave no count. After the Post, she wrote, “we really began to be flooded with mail.” By then, she added, book sales had climbed from two or three a week to about 25.
Los Angeles grew up on the book. A Denver man, Mort J., bought it in September 1939, dropped it in his suitcase unread and went on a spree. He came to in Palm Springs, found the book in his luggage and read it, shaking. That was in November, and he never drank again. “Mort was a book convert pure and simple,” Bill wrote.
In Los Angeles, Mort worked through a list of prospects left by Kaye M., who had started the first meetings there, and hired a room at the Cecil Hotel. Another reader of the book, Frank R., came from Arizona at New York’s suggestion “to see if what it said was really true.”
“The A.A. book became their mainstay, even their bible,” Bill wrote. For a long while no sober, experienced member from outside reached them. Once they wrote to New York: “Well, we’ve got a lot of people sober out here. But we do sometimes wonder if anybody is sober east of the Rocky Mountains.”
Not every group the mail started got the book right. Ruth Hock remembered one, in a town she didn’t name, whose leader she thought was called Henry.
It worked, she wrote, on “the theory that all alcoholic beverages were very bad for the alcoholic - except beer.” So beer was served at its meetings, “with copious readings of the A.A. book.”
Troubles like that were what the office’s letters came to be about. Bill’s list of them in 1955 ran from moochers and quarreling committees to whole groups getting drunk.