This 19-minute recording of Bill Wilson's talk explains the Three Legacies of AA - Recovery, Unity & Service. Bill gives an example of "service" (carrying the message of recovery) by talking about Ebby's 12-Step call described on p. 8 of Chapter 1, Bill's Story in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. The talk presents the 5-step program Ebby learned from members of the Oxford Group, especially Rowland Hazard, the "certain American businessman" described on p. 26. Dr. Jung told Rowland he needed a "vital spiritual experience" that Roland had to find on his own; Dr. Jung had tried without success to produce the "huge emotional displacements and rearrangements" associated with the spiritual experience that had helped alcoholics recover since early times.

"As finally expressed and offered, they are simple in language, plain in meaning. They are also workable by any person having a sincere desire to obtain and keep sobriety. The results are the proof. Their simplicity and workability are such that no special interpretations, and certainly no reservations, have ever been necessary. And it has become increasingly clear that the degree of harmonious living which we achieve is in direct ratio to our earnest attempt to follow them literally under Divine guidance to the best of our ability."

Doctor Bob

The Points of Light Foundation offers biographical information on many people, including A.A.'s Co-Founders.

Robert Smith & William Wilson

"United in their search for sobriety, Dr. Bob and Bill W. established
Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935. This fellowship allows men and women to share with one another their experience, strength, and hope in order to carry the message of recovery to alcoholics seeking help."

"It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a power greater than myself. Nothing more was required for me to make my beginning."

Here are essays, stories, articles, and links to websites with information of interest to A.A. members and others who want to know more about our pioneering founders.

THE FUNDAMENTALS - IN RETROSPECT By Dr. Bob Smith
September 1948, AA Grapevine

It is gratifying to feel that one belongs to and has a definite personal part in the work of a growing and spiritually prospering organization for the release of the alcoholics of mankind from a deadly enslavement. For me, there is double gratification in the realization that, more than thirteen years ago, an all-wise Providence, whose ways must always be mysterious to our limited understandings, brought me to "see my duty clear" and to contribute in decent humility, as have so many others, my part in guiding the first trembling steps of the then-infant organization, Alcoholics Anonymous. [AA began June 10, 1935, with the start of Dr. Bob's lasting sobriety. He died November 16, 1950.]

On Bill Wilson:
From the rubble of a wasted life, he overcame alcoholism and founded the 12-step program that has helped millions of others do the same
By SUSAN CHEEVER

Monday, June 14, 1999
Second Lieut. Bill Wilson didn't think twice when the first butler he had ever seen offered him a drink. The 22-year-old soldier didn't think about how alcohol had destroyed his family. He didn't think about the Yankee temperance movement of his childhood or his loving fiance Lois Burnham or his emerging talent for leadership. He didn't think about anything at all. "I had found the elixir of life," he wrote. Wilson's last drink, 17 years later, when alcohol had destroyed his health and his career, precipitated an epiphany that would change his life and the lives of millions of other alcoholics. Incarcerated for the fourth time at Manhattan's Towns Hospital in 1934, Wilson had a spiritual awakening — a flash of white light, a liberating awareness of God — that led to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous and Wilson's revolutionary 12-step program, the successful remedy for alcoholism. The 12 steps have also generated successful programs for eating disorders, gambling, narcotics, debting, sex addiction and people affected by others' addictions. Aldous Huxley called him "the greatest social architect of our century."

Word of Mouth

"In my view, there isn't the slightest objection to groups who wish to remain strictly anonymous, or to people who think they would not like their membership in A.A. known at all. That is their business, and this is a very natural reaction."

"However, most people find that anonymity to this degree is not necessary, or even desirable. Once one is fairly sober, and sure of this, there seems no reason for failing to talk about A.A. membership in the right places. This has a tendency to bring in other people. Word of mouth is one of our most important communications."