Carried Away With the Desire to Serve

October 1939. There was no Tradition Eleven — there were no Traditions at all — and a man in Detroit who had never made a speech in his life got himself onto the radio. A.A.'s history of its co-founder sets down the date (Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers): "In October 1939, Archie managed to get a six-minute radio interview about his recovery in A.A. It was heard in a number of Midwest cities and certainly represented a first for the area." His own account sits in the Big Book (p. 254), and the phrase he chose for himself years afterward is the one to keep. "I, carried away with the desire to serve A.A., gave what was probably one of the first radio broadcasts about A.A., living through a case of mike fright and feeling like a million dollars when it was all over." Carried away with the desire to serve. He is not confessing to vanity and there is no sign of any — he was frightened, he did it anyway, and it helped. But notice what he could not possibly have had: any way of knowing where that ends. Nobody had it yet. This Tradition exists because a great many people just like Archie were each, individually, right.