histoire aa

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First Edition First Printing Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions Pocket Gift Edition Inscribed by Bill to Sybil

 

This is a 1st/1st Pocket 12&12 gifted to Sybil C. by Bill W. with the following inscription.... "Sybil Dear, For your wonderful devotion to so many! for your constant friendship to me, I give everlasting thanks. Affectionately Bill NY July/65"

 

Opposite on the inside cover Alabam wrote her name and phone number. 

 

 

 

Sybil C. was the first woman to enter A.A. west of the Mississippi. Her date of sobriety was March 23, 1941. In 1939, while visiting her mother, she read the Liberty magazine article called “Alcoholics and God.” She thought the story fascinating but did nothing about it and her downward spiral continued. Eighteen months later God gave her another chance, when she read the Saturday Evening Post’s March 1, 1941 issue which contained the famous Jack Alexander article about A.A.. She wrote to New York and received a reply from Ruth Hock, then Bill Wilson’s secretary, who told her that there were no women members in California, but that Marty Mann was sober in New York. Ruth referred her to the small group of men then in the area.

Frank R. explained that everything she needed to know was in the Big Book. "And it says right in here that when all other measures fail, working with another alcoholic will save the day. That’s what you will be doing, Sybil, working with other alcoholics". It worked, and she never had another drink.

 

When Bill and Lois Wilson made their first visit to Los Angeles in 1943, Sybil was one of the delegation of local A.A.’s who met them at the Town House hotel. Later she met Marty Mann. Because of her dedication to AA, her intensive work with alcoholics and her role in the growth of LA's AA community, Bill and her became good friends. She and Ruth remained friends throughout her life as well.

 

Sybil was honored at the International A.A. Convention in Montreal in 1985. She was then the longest-sober living woman in A.A. When she was introduced to the 50,000 attendees from fifty-three countries, she told the colorful story of A.A.’s beginning in Los Angeles, in which she had played such a vital role. When she finished her talk, the audience rose to its feet as one and gave her a standing ovation which continued so long that some thought it would never stop.

 

A propos de Sybil C. : http://www.kreizker.net/2017/11/sybil-c.html

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T. Henry & Clarace Williams, non-alcooliques, de Akron, chez qui se réunissaient le Dr Bob et d'autres alcooliques en rétablissement dans le cadre des groupes "Oxford"

 

Dear Clarace + T. Henry,

 

With this my deepest affection and with grateful memories of all that you both did when A.A. was very young to make our fellowship what it is today.

 

In devotion,

Bill

NY/10/18/60

 

Page 160 from the Big Book : "One man and his wife placed their large home at the disposal of this strangely assorted crowd. This couple has become so fascinated that they have dedicated their home to the work....Many a man, yet dazed from his hospital experience, has stepped over the threshold of that home into freedom. Many an alcoholic who entered there came away with an answer.... Impressed by those who visited him at the hospital, he capitulated entirely when later, in an upper room of this house, he heard the story of some man whose experience slosely talled with his own. The expression on the faces of the women, that indefinable something in the eyes of the men, the stimulating and electric atmosphere of the place, conspired to let him know that there was haven at last."

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