Not-God (45 page)

For three days, the assembled conventioneers awaited Bill’s presence to receive their recognition. Although they had heard of the dire state of his health, most anticipated at least an appearance. Yet hope for it waned as the long weekend drew to a close with former trustee chairman Bernard B. Smith substituting for the co-founder at Wilson’s scheduled appearances. One who was there described what happened on Sunday morning:

Bill’s other “gracious sentences” had touched on A.A. unity, an apt final legacy that perhaps reflected a final concern.
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Six months later, at 11:30
P.M.
on Sunday, January 24, 1971, at the Miami Heart Institute in Miami Beach, Florida, William Griffith Wilson died. Suddenly both his hopes and others’ fears could finally find free scope. So long guided by the presence of its charismatic co-founder, how would the A.A. fellowship adapt to his absence?

The week following Bill’s death, a group of about fifteen attended a private ceremony held at the Wilsons’ Stepping Stones home in Bedford Hills, New York. The local Methodist minister conducted the service, with Bill’s former secretary Nell Wing playing the hymns on the piano. Bill’s body, meanwhile, remained in Miami Beach, the frozen Vermont earth preventing final interment until spring. Months later, on Saturday, the eighth of May, Wilson’s remains were finally laid to rest in a casket fashioned of Vermont maple, buried on an East Dorset hillside overlooking the valley where as a boy he had fashioned a bomerang, quaffed cider with Mark Whalon, and lamented the death of Bertha Banford. A simple stone marked his grave. It read: William G. Wilson 1895-1971. As he and Dr. Bob had decided over two decades before, no mention was made of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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Bill’s death did not pass unnoticed, by either A.A.’s membership or the larger world.
The New York Times
accorded Wilson a front-page obituary, complete with picture, identifying him as “a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.”
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As delegates at the April 1971 General Service Conference were informed in response to a question, after a member’s death anonymity need be observed only if that was the member’s expressed wish and his family’s continuing desire. In Bill’s case, the final use of his full name “was neither an accident nor a hasty decision.… [His] anonymity simply
could not
be kept. In this sense, then, the decision was, in effect, a bowing to the inevitable.”
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No less than other humans, alcoholics need to grieve and to celebrate. Perhaps more than most individuals, A.A. members crave also to express gratitude. And so, although hesitantly, a Bill W. “Memorial Fund” was established by A.A. World Services to receive but not to solicit donations.
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More pragmatically from an A.A. point of view, the date February 14, 1971, was suggested as a day for members throughout the world to hold services honoring the memory of Bill W.
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Despite uneven press coverage and unevenly planned events, individuals assembled in each of the fifty states and in at least sixteen other nations. At each gathering, gratitude overwhelmed sorrow, and confidence in A.A.’s stability muted both hopes and fears. The insight uniting those themes concerned Bill’s own humanity. “ ‘He was not a tin god,’” the Associated Press reported, “Marty M. reminded the 2,000 who turned out for services at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. ‘He was a man among us.’”
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Bill’s intention, from as far back as the late forties, had been that A.A.’s annual General Service Conference would be his and Dr. Bob’s successor. Grateful as he remained to A.A.’s trustees, respectful as he was of the skills brought by those who worked in the General Service Office of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Wilson from the beginning had insisted that the membership run its own affairs. The 1955 Coming of Age convention, Bill’s decade-long urging of the change in A.A.’s trustee ratio, the fellowship’s 1965 embrace of the “I Am Responsible” Declaration: each had served the same goal of assuring the continuity of Alcoholics Anonymous by investing its members with proximate authority.

The years that followed would unfold the success of those efforts. But already in April 1971, at the first gathering of A.A.’s General Service Conference in Wilson’s absence, Conference Coordinator Waneta N. spoke for the delegates in reminding those assembled of the continuity they represented:

In telling A.A.’s story up to the time of Bill W.’s death, the co-founder’s writings — and especially his correspondence — structured the narration. With Wilson gone, that framework changes, the
Final Report
of each year’s meeting of A.A.’s General Service Conference becoming the primary source for investigating the historical development of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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The necessary shift from the co-founder’s thoughts to the delegate-members’ actions preserves a kind of continuity, for it best allows telling the ongoing story of Alcoholics Anonymous not as institution or organization but as the
fellowship
that the “A.A. Preamble” portrays it to be.
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Yet this change of focus also opens a new ambiguity. As A.A.’s Second Tradition reminds: “For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority — a loving God as he may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.” No more than Bill W. did does A.A.’s General Service Conference possess authority to rule. The authority of each year’s
Conference Proceedings and Final Reports
, which afford the chronological spine of this chapter’s discussion, thus merits a moment’s examination. For purposes of the present story, it seems apt to compare the authority of the Conference documents with that of Bill’s correspondence.

Wilson’s writings carried weight because, as co-founder, he shared not only his own experience but that of A.A. as a whole insofar as he knew it. No one else had been there from the very beginning. Yet Bill remained conscious that as an individual he needed to be guided by the group conscience. Despite the A.A. fellowship’s increasing distance from members’ memories of its Oxford Group origins, the ancient spiritual concept of guidance or direction remained firmly entrenched not only in the practice of sponsorship but also in the frequently recalled “group conscience.” In this sense, then, each year’s General Service Conference meeting possessed greater authority than had Wilson’s letters: he had reflected A.A.’s group conscience; the Conference came closer to constituting it, at least for the moment of its meeting.
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In another sense, however, the authority of each year’s Conference lacked the consistency that in general did inform Bill’s writings. No Conference can bind its successors. Although respectful of past Conference decisions, each year’s delegates have felt free to rescind as well as to affirm previous Conference Advisory Actions. Such an approach enjoys the manifest advantages of allowing ready adaptation to changing circumstances, but it at times suffers the drawback of at least apparent inconsistency.
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But consistency can be a dubious goal for a fellowship such as Alcoholics Anonymous. A.A. throughout its history has been not a political entity that makes decisions but individual members who meet in a wide variety of groups trying to live a spiritual way of life. As the constant turnings to actual experience attest, not Advisory Actions but actual practice defines A.A.’s story. Yet the storyteller confronts two realities. First, individuals and groups rarely leave records, but Conferences do. Second, as Alcoholics Anonymous grew and spread, geographical variations in practice increased. More and more, then, the best vantage point for viewing the actual practice of
all
A.A. groups became each year’s meeting of the General Service Conference.

Within the fellowship as a whole, many concerns — problems that contained opportunities — carried across the watershed of Bill Wilson’s death. The problem of “other problems” continued and even expanded, but in ways that more enriched the fellowship than threatened its program. Similarly, Wilson’s constant concern about those unreached by Alcoholics Anonymous found continued expression under a new heading, as people became more concerned with various minorities, and through a new outlet, as a new kind of professional emerged in the field of alcoholism treatment. Not unrelatedly, both interest in those unhelped and the influence of professionals gave impetus to the formation of “special groups,” and that concept came to be more clearly defined. Finally, the continued emphasis upon A.A. unity as founded in and guaranteed by the fellowship’s single-purposed focus on alcoholism more and more evidenced A.A.’s uniqueness, especially in the wake of the spring 1987 decision of the National Council on Alcoholism to extend its mission to include “other drugs.”
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Continuous as were these concerns, the overarching theme that had characterized the story of Alcoholics Anonymous from its very beginning remained even more consistent: how the fellowship maintained its unity in the face of ever-increasing diversity. The motif of pluralism established at Bill’s first meeting with Dr. Bob attained full richness only after the co-founders’ departure. Pluralism involves the capacity to experience oneness in such a way that differences are perceived as enriching rather than threatening. Pluralism rejoices in the realization that differences can serve a higher unity, so long as disagreements are not contested disagreeably. The openness to difference assumes “fellow-feeling” — the sense of shared and mutual vulnerability that is the foundation of any true fellowship. As the first generation of Alcoholics Anonymous knew and attempted to capture in their appropriation of that word, “fellowship” implied finding strength in a oneness that derived from accepting weakness.

But “difference” itself means different things. The most obvious difference, as A.A.’s story continues, was that between the situation of the fellowship with and without the presence of its esteemed co-founder. The next layer of difference can be sub-divided into two related topics: how increasing length of sobriety, increasing numbers of those long-sober, and increasing social enlightenment about alcoholism revealed different styles of living A.A.’s fundamental Twelve-Step program; and how new and different drugs and a widening concept of addiction and chemical dependency raised at least apparently different questions concerning “other problems.”

The pluralistic theme of unity amid diversity thus frames this chapter no less than it shaped A.A.’s earlier story. How did Alcoholics Anonymous maintain unity in the midst of increasing differences both within the fellowship and in its cultural context? How did Alcoholics Anonymous adapt to increasing difference while preserving the unity of its Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions? A preliminary answer may be found in the Twelve Concepts, but before turning to their examination, here is a brief outline of the sub-themes and topics to be treated in what follows.

The theme of pluralism is best explored under the headings of growth and communication that furnished the motifs of the 1971 General Service Conference. Under
growth
falls examination first of its fact, then of its implications. One implication of A.A.’s growth and its changing role within society involved communication needs. A.A.
communication
was both internal and external. The former addressed service, anonymity, and self-support; the latter aimed to carry A.A.’s message not only to alcoholics as yet unreached by the fellowship but also to the professionals who were increasingly involved with both actively drinking and soberly recovering alcoholics. Moreover, A.A.’s most recent history suggests that both growth and communication have led to renewed attention to spirituality, in a context replete with potential for both triumph and tragedy.

As that brief outline hints, many of the differences that concerned Alcoholics Anonymous involved the fellowship’s “Third Legacy of Service.” Pursuing that clue leads to the discovery that A.A. practice suggests a way of understanding how the fellowship’s General Service Conference has over the past sixteen years lived out its responsibility both as Bill W.’s successor and as microcosm reflecting what actually occurs in individual groups and in the practice of the program by individual members. Following the sequence of attention that guided A.A.’s co-founder during his lifetime, the fellowship’s internal development may be divided into three periods. The first would run from the beginnings until about 1950: the period of the Twelve Steps being practiced, accepted, and confirmed in the lives of both its members and the fellowship itself. The second spans the era from the fellowship’s coming of age in the early Fifties to Bill’s death in 1971. This was the period in which the Twelve Traditions were finally internalized and tested in A.A. practice. Finally, although Bill W. wrote the Twelve Concepts for World Service in 1959 and witnessed their embrace in 1962, the era of the Concepts truly began only after his death. As of this writing, it is an epoch that still runs.
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