Notes on Clarence S.

Mike, The notion that Cleveland was the first group to call itself “Alcoholics Anonymous” is revisionism that Clarence S used to buttress his weak claim to be one of the founders of AA (which he publicly did up to his passing).

In a March 20, 1957 letter to Clarence S, Bill W responded to some items of revisionism that Clarence S persistently attempted to propagate. It occurred during the review of the manuscript for “AA Comes of Age.”

“… Relative to what you say about ‘In Cleveland many persons are proud of the distinction that A.A. did start there’, I can’t find myself in full agreement. This seems to be a sort of hairsplitting question as to just who got there first. You folks who started the Cleveland group had been under the Oxford Group influence at T. Henry’s. When you shifted to Cleveland, you merely changed your address and then had a meeting composed of alcoholics only. In fact, you carried the Oxford Group Absolutes with you and have used them ever since.

Even so, Cleveland did not actually have the first AA meeting of alcoholics only. In New York we had completely quit the Oxford Group by 1937. Between then, the text of the AA book was done in New York between that time and the spring of 1939. The name Alcoholics Anonymous was also coined there. So, the AA book itself was off the press before there was any meeting in Cleveland at all. This would seem to indicate that there was quite a lot of straight AA going on before anything happened in Cleveland itself. In fact, it was the appearance of the AA book that actually split the meeting at T. Henry’s. At least, as I remember it …”

In a November 21, 1966 letter about Clarence to Dorothy S (Clarence’s ex-wife) Bill W wrote:

… Today the feeling in Cleveland seems quite different. As a fact, in 1955 the Cleveland Central Bulletin published a most moving apology to me for all the nonsense that had gone on. As you remember when “A.A. Comes of Age” was in preparation in 1957, we made a most careful inquiry into the facts of the early times. A chapter draft of this was sent to you and Clarence. An exchange of letters with him was interesting. After my reply to the first one, pointing out some of his errors, he pulled his head way in, and replied in a very friendly way to the second letter. He could hardly do otherwise I guess, because we had, after all, contacted other early Clevelanders and had their versions of the beginnings there. In the second letter, he admits that “A.A. didn’t start in Cleveland” – that the first group there had simply borrowed the A.A. name from the title of the upcoming A.A. book. The rest of his comments had to do with the order or precedence of the hospitals who helped us out in Cleveland Akron respectively. In short, he assented to the story the way it was published.

So, I look at his recent performance in the Bay area and the even more amazing report of it to be just another example of his extreme persuasiveness – in which he actually persuades himself! …

Arthur S.