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Illustration · A country cemetery on a clear afternoon late in December: rows of plain headstones, every one alike, a pot of yellow chrysanthemums at the foot of one, the last leaves coming down from an oak, and far off on a rise a tall stone shaft standing by itself. Not drawn from a photograph.

Daily Reflections · December 30

Anonymity

AA members took up a collection for a monument to Dr. Bob and Anne S.; he had the money given back, and asked to be buried like other folks.

Today’s reading

The reading for December 30 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from Alcoholics Anonymous, the Big Book, page 562: the twelfth and last of the Twelve Traditions in their short form, which the book prints in its first appendix, “The A.A. Tradition.”

This page doesn’t reprint it. Read it free at aa.org, then come back for the asks.

Read it at aa.org

Themes and asks

  1. A Tradition for one person

    The member who wrote the reflection counts this Tradition, alongside the Steps, among the things their sobriety depends on, and says it has been so since their first days in AA. This page notes how unusual that is: the Traditions were written for groups.

    • Which Tradition do you use on yourself, and not only at the business meeting?
    • When did a Tradition last settle something in your own life, not your group’s?

  2. Cut down to size

    For the member, the Twelfth Tradition did two jobs: it shrank their sense of their own importance, and it took the heat out of a temper that had come into AA with them. The passage puts it more broadly, as the idea ahead of the individual.

    • Who in AA got under your skin this week? What principle could you set against the person?
    • Where in the rooms do you still need to be noticed: your years, your story, your service?

  3. Like other folks

    Read beside the history below: Dr. Bob was offered a monument and chose a plain stone with no mention of AA on it. This page reads that as today’s Tradition carried all the way to the end of a life.

    • What credit are you still waiting for, in AA or out of it?
    • What have you done for another alcoholic that nobody knows about? How does it sit with you that nobody does?

  4. The ones already there

    The reflection ends on thanks, to the people who helped its writer when help was needed. This page adds a thought of its own: most of us knew those people by a first name, and that was enough.

    • Who was there the day you came in? How much did you ever know about them outside AA?
    • Who is counting on you to be there now, whether or not they’ll remember your name?

Behind the words

Just like other folks

Today’s sentence is the last of the Twelve Traditions in their short form, and it asks members to put the idea ahead of the person. In the last year and a half of his life Dr. Bob S., AA’s co-founder in Akron, was offered the opposite. What he did about it was printed four times over the next thirty years, and no two printings tell it quite the same way.

His wife, Anne S., died on June 1, 1949. A few days later, as Emma K. remembered it in Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, he asked her to help him find a stone. Emma was a nurse who, with her husband Lavelle, was looking after him and the house. They went round several cemeteries and settled on Mt. Peace, in Akron. Emma took it for granted that the stone would say something about AA. “Mercy, no,” he said.

AA members had more than a stone in mind. Bill W. told it first, in the tribute he wrote for the Grapevine of January 1951, within two months of Dr. Bob’s death on November 16, 1950: once Anne was gone, many people wanted “an imposing shaft,” and they were insistent. Dr. Bob heard of it and came out against any memorial to the two of them. The biography adds that a collection had already been started, and that he asked for the money to be given back. In AA Comes of Age, in 1957, Bill wrote that a committee had gone as far as showing Dr. Bob “a sketch of the proposed edifice.”

Dr. Bob’s funeral was led by Walter Tunks, the minister whose answer to a telephone call in 1935 had helped bring him and Bill together, and he was buried beside Anne. Bill went to see the grave afterward. His 1955 article puts the visit in the summer before, and the 1957 book puts it a year after Dr. Bob’s death, but what he found is the same in both. “The simple stone says not a word about Alcoholics Anonymous,” the book has it. In 1955 he had added: “This made me so glad I cried.”

Bill never claimed the Tradition came as easily to him. Dr. Bob’s example in those last years, he wrote in 1957, “did much to help me keep my own lid on.” Bill died in January 1971 and was buried that May in the family plot at East Dorset, Vermont. Pass It On describes his gravestone as a simple marker, cut from the same white marble his father used to quarry.

More on Dr. Bob’s last two years, the stone and his last talk: Legacy, in I Just Work Here. On Bill’s death and the grave at East Dorset: Legacy, in Number One Man. How the Twelfth Tradition got its short wording: The short form, in Rule 62.

One remark, four printings

What Dr. Bob said about the monument, as each account printed it, in the order they were set down. The first three are Bill W.’s; the fourth is AA’s biography of Dr. Bob, published thirty years after he died. The lines under each are this page’s.

  1. 1951The Grapevine, January

    “Annie and I plan to be buried just like other folks.”

    Bill’s tribute, in print within two months of the funeral. Here Dr. Bob speaks for Anne and himself, and the piece doesn’t say who heard him.

  2. 1955The Grapevine, January

    “For Heaven’s sake, Bill, why don’t you and I get buried like other folks?”

    Four years on it is a question, put to Bill with a grin. The offer is now a monument or a mausoleum, made just before Dr. Bob died, and declined with thanks.

  3. 1957AA Comes of Age

    “for heaven’s sake, Bill, let’s you and I get buried just like other folks.”

    The end of a longer remark, which first blesses the friends behind the plan and allows that they meant well. This telling brings in the committee and its sketch.

  4. 1980Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers

    “Let’s you and I get buried just like other folks.”

    The biography keeps the shortest form, says it was said to Bill, and sets it in the months after Anne’s death, beside the collection he had returned.

Threads

Each one opens the calendar with its days lit up.

Sources
  • Alcoholics Anonymous. Works Publishing, 1939; fourth edition, AA World Services, 2001. Appendix I, “The A.A. Tradition” (the short form; the reading cites page 562).
  • Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers. AA World Services, 1980. Chapter XXVIII, “Without Anne, but with loving friends” (Anne’s death, Emma and Lavelle K., the stone, the collection and the remark), and Chapter XXIX, “The last year” (his death and funeral).
  • The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “Dr. Bob: A Tribute,” January 1951, and “Why Alcoholics Anonymous Is Anonymous,” January 1955.
  • Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Unity: The Second Legacy” (the committee’s sketch, the remark, Bill’s visit to the grave and his own lid).
  • Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter 25 (Bill’s death) and the Afterword (his burial at East Dorset and the gravestone).
  • Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. December 30 · aa.org

Something wrong here? A date, a name, a quotation? Let me know

Daily Reflections is AA’s book of readings for every day of the year, each written by a member about a favorite passage from AA’s literature. A Daily Reprieve gives each day questions to sit with and the story behind its words.

Printed from One Drunk to Another, an independent AA history · onedrunktoanother.org/today/december-30/