1953
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
The Traditions were “first published in 1946 and later confirmed at A.A.’s First International Convention, held at Cleveland in 1950.”
Confirmed
The foreword
“In the future we could no longer depend upon the authority and influence of our pioneering people for A.A. unity.”
Who keeps it?
By the late 1940s AA’s services were in the hands of the Alcoholic Foundation, a small board of trustees in New York. “The Trustees had authority over our services; A.A. itself had no authority,” Bill W. said. “Not one A.A. in a thousand could name even half of them.” The link between the groups and New York was Dr. Bob, the office staff and Bill, and Dr. Bob was ill: after an operation in 1947, he learned in 1948 that he had cancer. What would become of AA “when its old-timers and founders had gone”?
Bill wanted a conference of delegates elected by the groups, to which the trustees would answer. From 1946 he pressed the nine trustees with memos. One ended with a sentence he later called astonishing: “When I was in law school, the largest book I studied was the one on Trusts. … it was mostly a long and melancholy account of the malfeasances and misfeasances of boards of trustees.” Most trustees were against it, and so were many of the oldest members in New York, Akron, Cleveland and Chicago (The quarter mile tells how the fight went for Bill). In February 1949 he wrote to Dr. Bob, “The stark fact is that you and I still head Alcoholics Anonymous.” In March Dr. Bob, very ill, wrote that he did “not have the feeling that this is a particularly guided thing to do now.”
Meanwhile a member in Houston proposed, in June 1949, an international convention. Bill liked the idea, but said no body yet existed that could speak for AA and approve it, and suggested not calling it “international.” Cleveland was chosen, 35 miles from Dr. Bob’s home in Akron, close enough for him to attend. The convention opened on Friday, July 28, 1950, with about 3,000 people at $1.50 a head. Meetings were held at the Carter, Hollenden and Cleveland hotels, with one in the Music Hall.
Saturday afternoon was set aside for the Traditions, now in their short form. In Bill’s account, several speakers presented them, and he summed them up and “asked the Convention for final approval”; a recording, he said, kept “the Convention’s unanimous voice of consent.” A member’s report, printed in Pass It On, adds that Bill asked for discussion and none came. Then “he suggested as there were no comments, we should adopt them officially for A.A. by standing vote. Everyone in the crowded room rose.” Bill declared them “adopted as part of our A.A. doctrine.” The next afternoon Dr. Bob gave his last talk (Legacy, in I Just Work Here, tells it).
A vote still left the Traditions without a keeper. Later that year, when Bill told Dr. Bob the trustees would probably agree to a conference, Dr. Bob gave his consent, and the trustees endorsed the plan. Bill set it out in a pamphlet, The Third Legacy, and the office shipped 50,000 copies to the groups. The first General Service Conference met in New York in April 1951.
It’s a Saturday afternoon in July 1950, at AA’s first International Convention, in Cleveland. About three thousand people have come.
For four years Bill W. has been pushing the Twelve Traditions, and arguing with AA’s trustees about who will look after AA when he and Dr. Bob are gone. Dr. Bob is dying of cancer. Cleveland was picked because it’s close to his home in Akron.
Now the Traditions are put to the convention. As one member remembered it, Bill asks for discussion, and nobody says a word. So he suggests a standing vote, and everyone in the crowded room rises.
The Traditions belong to the members now. Who will keep them is the next question. Bill’s answer is a conference of delegates elected by the groups. It meets for the first time the following April.
