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Who was Bill W.?

In short:

  • Bill W. was William Griffith Wilson (1895–1971), one of A.A.'s two co-founders (P-53, 2017); the Big Book's Foreword to the Second Edition calls him "a New York stockbroker" (p. xv). His own story, written in 1939, is Chapter 1 of the Big Book, "Bill's Story" (pp. 1–16).
  • His drinking began in the army in the First World War, ruined a Wall Street career, and ended in Towns Hospital in December 1934, after a sober old friend (Ebby) had come to his kitchen with "a simple religious idea and a practical program of action" (p. 9). He writes, "I have not had a drink since." (p. 13).
  • Working with other alcoholics was, from the start, how he stayed sober: "when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day." (p. 15). Looking for one in Akron in May 1935 led him to Dr. Bob (P-53, 2017), and the Big Book dates the first group's spark to Akron in June 1935 (p. xv).
  • He drafted the Big Book's chapters (1939) (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957) and codified the Traditions (1946), helped set up the trustees (1938) and the General Service Conference (1951), and stepped down from active leadership in 1955 (P-53, 2017), the year he turned A.A.'s affairs over to the Conference at St. Louis (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). He died January 24, 1971 (p. 16).

His own account, written 1939: "Bill's Story" (pp. 1–16)

The Big Book never gives his full name. The chapter tells the arc in order:

  • The war and the first drinks. A young officer from Plattsburg in a New England town, flattered by the first citizens, "in the midst of the excitement I discovered liquor." (p. 1). Sailing for France: "I was very lonely and again turned to alcohol." (p. 1). An inscription on a tombstone at Winchester Cathedral was an "Ominous warning—which I failed to heed." (p. 1).
  • Wall Street. Home at twenty-two, he took a night law course, worked as an investigator for a surety company, and became interested in the market (p. 2). He and his wife saved $1,000, put it into securities, and spent a year on a motorcycle with a sidecar touring factories for Wall Street; the reports got him a position and an expense account (pp. 2–3). "For the next few years fortune threw money and applause my way." (p. 3). His drinking went on all day and almost every night (p. 3).
  • The crash and after. October 1929 wiped him out; a friend in Montreal took him on, then had to let him go (p. 4). The couple went to live with his wife's parents; he had "no real employment for five years" (p. 4), while his wife worked in a department store (p. 4). "Liquor ceased to be a luxury; it became a necessity." (p. 5). Resolves and promises failed, and he began to wonder whether he was crazy (pp. 5–6).
  • The hospital. Through his brother-in-law, a physician, and his mother, he was placed in a hospital for alcoholics, where "a kind doctor" explained that he had been seriously ill in body and mind (p. 7). Self-knowledge wasn't the answer; he drank again, went back, and his wife was told he would die in delirium tremens or develop a wet brain within a year (p. 7). "Alcohol was my master." (p. 8). He was off again on Armistice Day 1934 (p. 8).
  • The old school friend. In late November 1934 an old friend phoned, came over sober, refused a drink and said, "I've got religion." (p. 9). The friend had been shown "a simple religious idea and a practical program of action" (p. 9), and had come to pass it on. Bill's objection to religion was the idea of a God personal to him (p. 10); the friend's answer, "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?" (p. 12), is the turning point of the chapter. See: Who was the old school friend in "Bill's Story" (Ebby)?
  • The last hospital stay. "At the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time." (p. 13). There he offered himself to God as he then understood Him, faced his wrongs, and made a list of people he had hurt or resented (p. 13). His friend set out what he was to do: test his thinking, sit quietly when in doubt, pray only for usefulness to others (p. 13). The effect was "electric" (p. 14); he asked the doctor if he was still sane (p. 14). See: What happened to Bill W. at Towns Hospital?
  • Working with others. In the hospital the thought came that thousands of hopeless alcoholics "might be glad to have what had been so freely given me" (p. 14). "Faith without works was dead, he said. And how appallingly true for the alcoholic!" (p. 14). He and his wife threw themselves into helping other alcoholics; business associates stayed skeptical for a year and a half (p. 15), and when self-pity and resentment nearly drove him back to drink, "work with another alcoholic would save the day." (p. 15). The chapter ends on a fellowship with "a vast amount of fun about it all" (p. 16) and "deadly earnestness" underneath (p. 16).

A note added to the chapter in a later edition reads: "Bill W., co-founder of A.A., died January 24, 1971." (p. 16).

The facts of his life (P-53)

A.A.'s pamphlet The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (P-53, © 2017) gives the outline (P-53, 2017):

  • Born November 26, 1895, in East Dorset, Vermont, the only son of Emily and Gilman Barrows Wilson; schooled in East Dorset, Rutland, Burr and Burton Seminary in Manchester, and Arlington (Massachusetts) High School.
  • Entered Norwich University, a Vermont military college, in 1914; three years of electrical engineering, cut short by the war. Commissioned a second lieutenant; served in France with the 66th Artillery. "It was during this period of military service that he started to drink, with disastrous results almost at once." (P-53, 2017).
  • Married Lois Burnham of Brooklyn on January 24, 1918, shortly before leaving for active duty. See: Who was Lois W., and what did she do in A.A.'s beginning?
  • After the war: the New York Central Railroad briefly; 1921–25 an investigator for the U.S. Fidelity & Guaranty Company, and a three-year night law course at Brooklyn Law School; from 1925 a field investigator whose reports on industrial properties backed heavy speculation.
  • By 1931 his drinking was a serious problem; "what had promised to be a brilliant Wall Street career rapidly deteriorated." (P-53, 2017).
  • November 1934: learned from Ebby how the Oxford Group was sometimes able to help alcoholics. In Towns Hospital a month later, "in total despair, he cried out for help." (P-53, 2017), and had what he described as an overwhelming spiritual experience. Six months of trying to sober up alcoholics without success; then the May 1935 business trip to Akron and the meeting with Dr. Bob. See: How did Bill W. and Dr. Bob meet?
  • His A.A. service "spanned 36 years" (P-53, 2017): with other oldtimers he formulated the recovery program, codified the first ten years of group experience into the Traditions, wrote four books for the movement, and spoke before medical, psychiatric and religious societies. "During his lifetime, he declined all public honors, setting an example for the whole Fellowship." (P-53, 2017).
  • Structure: helped establish a board of trustees in 1938; after the Big Book (1939), a publishing company and service office; then the delegates' conference, begun in 1951. In 1955, "he stepped down from active leadership" (P-53, 2017). P-53 adds that "The last decade of his life was devoted largely to non-A.A. activities." (P-53, 2017).
  • He died of pneumonia in Miami Beach, Florida, on January 24, 1971, and was buried in East Dorset, Vermont (P-53, 2017).

P-53 also prints the last part of his last major talk (October 11, 1969, New York), which is mostly about how the Traditions came out of the groups' troubles after 1941. He says that after the Jack Alexander article the oldtimers "began to be taught by the growing movement" (P-53, talk of 1969), and "I, in particular, became a pupil of the Fellowship." (P-53, talk of 1969). He tells of turning down a Time cover and an honorary doctorate from Yale to keep "the spirit of anonymity" (P-53, talk of 1969), and of his partnership with Dr. Bob: "We never had a hard word between us, and the credit is all due to him." (P-53, talk of 1969).

His 1955 account (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957)

The talk on Recovery that Bill gave at St. Louis in 1955 retells the story with details the 1939 chapter leaves out, dated two decades later:

  • He grew up in East Dorset, Vermont, under Mount Aeolus, and from the age of ten lived with his grandparents (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Tall, gawky and depressed, "I resolved to be a Number One man." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957): six months whittling boomerangs, then captain of the baseball team and leader of the school orchestra (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
  • The sudden death of a girl he loved at boarding school put him into a depression of three years; he did not graduate (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). "Then along came Lois, and I was suddenly alive again" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). They married during the war while he was a young officer at New Bedford; a Bronx cocktail at a society party was the first drink: "I was part of life at last." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
  • He gives the Wall Street years, the 1929 crash, a contract not to drink broken over "Jersey Lightning" applejack, and the night in September 1934 when he and Lois learned from Dr. Silkworth what was really wrong (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). The Armistice Day 1934 relapse is told in full: a bartender's free drink, and Lois finding him unconscious at five the next morning (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
  • Ebby's visit, a visit to Calvary Mission, the last trip to Towns, and the "great white light" of his spiritual experience (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), with Dr. Silkworth's reassurance and the reading of William James (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). See: Why does the Big Book mention William James?
  • Six months of failing to sober anyone up; then Akron, the Mayflower Hotel lobby, and the realization "You need another alcoholic to talk to. You need another alcoholic just as much as he needs you!" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Henrietta Seiberling and the Mother's Day call to Anne S. follow (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). See: Who was Henrietta Seiberling?

What he did after 1935

The same book is Bill's own history of what followed: the first groups at Akron and New York, the Rockefeller meeting of 1937, the Alcoholic Foundation (1938), the writing and near-bankruptcy of the Big Book, the Saturday Evening Post article (1941), the Traditions, and the Conference (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957, Part II). Each has its own page here. See: How was the Big Book paid for and published (Works Publishing)? · What was the Jack Alexander article (1941), and what did it do? · What are A.A.'s Three Legacies?

The book's first part is about St. Louis, July 1955, where Bill turned A.A.'s affairs over to its General Service Conference. His account of the moment: "Clearly my job henceforth was to let go and let God. Alcoholics Anonymous was at last safe—even from me." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). He described the founders' earlier position frankly, as "a sort of a double-headed papacy and a college of cardinals" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957) that had to be connected to "the great sea of democracy all about it." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). See: What happened at the St. Louis convention in 1955?

Later accounts, used with care

Pass It On (1984) is A.A.'s full-length biography of Bill, published thirteen years after his death. Its foreword calls it "a detailed retelling of the bedtime story" (Pass It On, 1984), the story Bill himself told countless times. It covers his boyhood, the war, his marriage, the drinking years, the founding, and the last decades, including matters the earlier books don't touch. Because it is a later book built on letters, interviews and memory, this page leans on Bill's own two accounts (1939, 1955) and on P-53 for dates, and uses Pass It On only where it is the sole source.

What our sources do not settle

  • Bill's 1939 story gives no one's name and no birth date (it names a few places, such as Winchester Cathedral and Montreal, pp. 1, 4); the biographical facts above come from P-53 (© 2017, with earlier contents) and from his 1955 talk.
  • His 1955 talk says his mother "had brought me into life fifty-nine years before" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), which fits a November 1895 birth as P-53 gives it.

Read it yourself

Sources

Source Pages Date
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 1, "Bill's Story" 1–16 1939 (the death note on p. 16 was added in a later edition)
Alcoholics Anonymous, Foreword to the Second Edition xv 1955
P-53, biographical sketch of Bill W. — pamphlet © 2017
P-53, Bill W.'s last major talk (New York) — talk October 11, 1969
A.A. Comes of Age, Part I, the Recovery talk, and the writing of the book — 1957
Pass It On, foreword — 1984

Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001).

Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book, P-53, A.A. Comes of Age and Pass It On are © A.A. World Services, Inc.

These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.