Singleness of Purpose Applied to AA Archives

Every delegate serves on a conference committee. Committee members areselected by lot, and a delegate serves on the same committee in both years of the term.Each

committee chooses by ballot its chairperson and alternate chairpersonfor the next conference year. Normally a committee is made up of four or five first yeardelegates and four or five second year.

GSO staff members serve as non-voting secretaries of the committees:each takes the committee corresponding with his or her regular staff assignment. If thecommittee has a trustee counterpart, the staff member is also secretary of that committee.

Until this year, there has been no conference archives committee.However, the 48th Conference voted that: A Conference Archives Committee, composed of ninedelegates (five from panel 48 and four from panel 49) meet as secondary committeeassignment, and that the committee meet jointly with the Trustees’ ArchivesCommittee. I see this as a beginning of regular conference committee.

"When did AA start in my area?" "Why was the word‘honest’ dropped from the Preamble?" Such questions are answered daily bythe staff of the AA archives, a GSO service born in 1973. It’s projects include:digitizing long accumulated records; re-taping valuable tapes; collecting oral historytapes from early members; gathering local material from individuals and groups; andhelping researchers inside and outside of AA.

Each assembly standing committee is composed of the chairpersons ofeach district standing committee and AA members who are willing to participate. Thechairperson is elected by group conscience in January of each even year.

Responsibilities of each standing commitee includes, but are notlimited to; chairing meetings, holding elections, and reporting to each quarterlyassembly.

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All area or state standing committees are funded by the area withmonies received from state-wide AA groups. For 1998, the area budget designated $1400 toarchives, and larger amounts have been budgeted for 1999. So you can see how importantyour contributions are at the state level.

According to the state structure, each district should also have thesix standing committees. The district elects committee members from its membership andfrom among interested and qualified AA’s in the district. Each standing committeeelects one of its members as chairperson, and that chairperson serves on the like-assemblystanding committee.

The Archives Committee is responible for establishing policies,budgets, and procedures. It undertakes and maintains final responsibility and authorityfor the use of the archives, and exercises its group conscience in regard to matters ofgeneral policy. In all of its actions, the Archives Committee needs to be mindful of andguided by AA’s primary purpose.

One of the most important functions of the Archives Committee is toestablish creative parameters for the selection of material to be collected.

I hope this little article is informative and helpful. If youhaven’t seen our archives facility, you have missed a real treat. Be sure to go by.

Phil V. S., Delegate Area 64, Panel 48

Group History Columbia AA, Tennessee District 40

Tom P. started first AA group in Columbia, April, 1945, with John E.,Andrew M., (bootlegger). Rip S. came in in April 5, 1948, Mr. P. big churchman rented TomP. his first clubhouse, a building next to his office. He was just a good church-going manand believed in Tom P. that he really wanted to stop drinking, and he would even pay therent for Tom’s law office, where they held the meetings.

Tom P. and Rip S. made a first step call on a woman, who was down andshe came to AA, and is now an R.N. , and holds a very responsible position at thehospital. Later on, the bishop of the Episcopal Church told Tom that they could meet inthe Vestry Room, as long as they wanted to. This began the first group in Columbia, TN.

The meetings are now held in the Friendship House on South High Streetin Columbia. On Monday nights, they have the open meeting and Thursday night closedmeeting. We now have 30 to 35 people on Mondays and 17 to 20 on Thursday night.

Tom P. says the meetings are still the same, except the faces havechanged some. The meeeting nights are still the same, as when it first began.

Written by Ann H. from talks with Tom P.

I have been asked to write an article regarding service. Per theinstructions of my sponsor, early in my recovery, I am writing an article regardingservice work. My sponsor as well as several wise women in the fellowship, suggested thatwhen asked to do something in AA, I should, if able.

Service was not an important issue during the first year of myrecovery, getting through, one day at a time without a drink was! Going to meetings on aregular basis and frequent sponsor contact were also more important to my recovery thanservice. During this time service was a topic of discusssion and learning, as were thesteps, with my sponsor and within meetings.

When I was a child, growing up in my father’s house, it was a"given" that I would attend college after high school. I have always felt thesame about my sponsors’ suggestions regarding service. After staying sober andworking through the suggested 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, I would try to carry themessage, and give something back, for the priceless gift of a new life without alcohol,that God and AA had freely given me. Page 4

Until then there were tables and chairs to be set up, coffee to bemade, ashtrays to be emptied, and my dollar in the basket. As my recovery grew, so did myvolunteer duties to AA, the fellowship,and the group, increase. Some groups in town hadsuggested lengths of sobriety, anywhere from one day to one month, for chairing meetings.Upon chairing meetings, it was often necessary to find speakers. It is an unspoken"rule" in the community that once you reach one year of continuous sobriety, youtell your story, "give a lead". One woman described it to me, that after about ayear, you have a recovery message to share, "your cup is full." For myself, atabout one year sober, I was content, no longer having the courts constantly looking overmy shoulder, I had a job and could pay the rent, bills, buy food and cigarettes, bus fare,and dollars for the basket and admission to AA dances.

I remember returning to a group, to receive a one year token, (afterattending for 3 years, 2 of which were to get my court card signed), I was asked to give alead the next week. I spoke at the next meeting, after which it was announced, a chairmanwas needed for next week. I volunteered to chair and asked my sponsor to speak. At thatmeeting the secretary announced that she had served as the group secretary for the oneyear, and a new secretary was needed. No one responded. I offered my services, (I was thenworking as a legal secretary), until a secretary could be found. I was told before I leftthat evening, that a secretary had been found!

While serving as secretary, I learned that AA could not fail if I wasnot present or arrived late to unlock the doors. I was the trusted servant of thatNorthwest Group. It was the secretary’s responsibility to see that the rent was paid,coffee and literature purchased, and that contributions

were made to the intergroup and GSO, all per the group’sconscience. So I was able to interact with the intergroup representative and GSR. Theintergroup rep. asked me to attend an intergroup meeting, in her absence. After one yearof service, I called for another secretary. I also thanked God for making me worthy to betrusted by, and to serve, these people.

Not long after that a group of women, elected me to be their intergrouprep. (Basically, because I had the 2 year suggested recovery!) I served and through theintergroup, heard that volunteers were needed to carry the message in corrections. And, soit goes, with a two year period, while pregnant, in which I was not able to commit toservice, not even chairing meetings.

Through service, I have learned gratitude, from the inmate, who hasbeen in jail, without alcohol longer than I have been sober, to another, who asks,"what is it like to leave your house and go to a meeting?" I have learnedhumility, from the court ordered probationer, who attended a AA orientation, and calls me,"the AA teacher," a month later at the bus stop. (to which I had to respond,"No, I am only a member.") I have learned how to get out of self and ego, whileabiding group conscience, which I sometimes don’t agree with, and giving, with nostrings attached. I have learned from my DCM, and delegates, not just procedures, butabout new attitudes and outlooks upon life.

And finally, I have learned that no matter what "title", Imay be given, and accept of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I am still analcoholic, and my primary purpose is to stay sober and help others.

Kim P. Hampshire , TN

Unnamed Poem

As I tried to pray to my God, I felt as if I could not make Even theslightest contact. I felt as if I was completely Lost and without hope.

I wanted desperately to Salvage life I may have left And experience somehappiness. I wanted desperately to Make ammends with the people In my small world in orderThat I may embrace them And become as one before Time runs out.

Then it occurred to me that God Himself may also want The same for hisloved ones In His ever so large world.

I felt that He could do this If only His people would be obedient.

Then it was evident to me That our worlds were one And the same and thatwe Were in fact in constant Contact with each other.

He made it clear that He Could and would help me With my despair if Iwould Be the least bit faithful And dependent on Him for Strength and Guidance and ThatHappiness would be my reward

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When Two people grow together, They work with each other, makes life better.

Pride and ego will push love away, They grow further apart each day.

Anger sets in and keeps getting stronger, This will cause time apart to get muchlonger.

When others has things to say, This puts pain and hurt in hearts to stay.

Just the two lovers can work things out This puts love in the heart with no doubt

Working together is always the best, Love in their lives will not be put to a test

When others get involved from the start It will end with not one but two broken hearts

Those two lives will never be the same, Because of others they had too much hurt--Pain.

Gerald G. Murfreesboro, TN

Won’t you share your group’s history, or personal story for the Archives? Each contribution will be filed in your district’s folder under your group name.

Comments Heard at the

Half-Measurers Table

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Dear Friends," In the late stages of ourdrinking, the will to resist has fled. Yet when we admit complete defeat and when webecome entirely ready to try A. A. principles, our obsession leaves us and we enter a newdimension--freedom under God as we understand Him." Bill W. , 1966letter

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spiritual principles to remain intact without change for so many years?Very simply, they were recorded, and once recorded, what had been shared experience passedby one alcoholic to another, became history.

With this in mind, we begin to see that the history of AlcoholicsAnonymous is formed not by the actual events that occur, but by the preservation ofrecords of those events. The message we carry was in the beginning a simple oral historyof each alcoholics experience as these principles were passed on from one individual toanother.

The "Forward to the Third Edition" of the Big Book states:"In spite of the great increase in the size and span of this Fellowship, at its coreit remains simple and personal. Each day, somewhere in the world, recovery begins when onealcoholic talks to another alcoholic, sharing experience, strength, and hope."

That’s how we began and that’s how we continue. We do onlyone thing, but we do it supremely well. We share experience. We share our personalexperience, and we share our collective experience, the message of Alcoholics Anonymous.

In the latter days of 1934, Bill W. had an experience that wouldforever change his outlook upon life and would ensure his continued sobriety until hisdeath. Sensing that his personal experience could be used to help others, he set aboutwith missionary zeal to sober up drunks. After months of hard work with numerousprospects, the sum total of those helped by his efforts was one : himself. Disheartened,he returned to his hysician, Dr. Silkworth, who

suggested that Bill stop preaching to them, and simply share hisexperience with alcoholism. Bill recorded his embroynic attempts to carry the massage inthe pages of the Big Book in hopes that we would not have to repeat his futile attempts atcarrying the message. With this recording, his experience became a shared history,ensuring that it would not be lost.

In June of 1935, Bill made his fateful business trip to Akron andwithin days found himself seated in Henrietta Sieberling’s small library, talking toDr. Bob S. As the physician later recalled in Pass It On: " Bill was the first personhe had talked with who knew from his own experience what alcoholism was." Said Dr.Bob, "In other words, he talked my language." This ability of one alcoholic tospeak the same language as another alcoholic became a part of our history because it wasrecorded.

Throughout that summer, these two, and the ones they helped, workedwith alcoholics in Akron. A group formed there, and by 1937, there were three groups. onein Akron, one in New York, and one in Cleveland. The individual experiences of theirmembers began to form the groups’ collective experience. As the "Foreward to theSecond Edition" of the Big Book states: "It was now time, the struggling groupsthought, to place their message and unique experience before the world. This determinationbore fruit in the spring of 1939 by the publication of this volume."

How does history carry the message of AA? A look at our Big Book canquite readily answer this. question. Because it records the experiences of the earlymembers, the Big Book is a history book from the very first page to the last. Theforewords to all three edition give us a short overview of the Page 8 history of AA."The Doctor’s Opinion" tells us how a physician in the late 1930s viewedalcoholism and this new phenomenon of recovery, which at that time remained unnamed, beingreferred to as a "nameless bunch of ex-drunks." The fellowship eventually tookthe name of the book Alcoholics Anonymous.

"Bill’s story" is the personal history of our founder.The stories in the back of the book are the personal histories of members of AA. Theirstories tell us more than their personal histories, however. Collectively, spanning threeeditions of the Big Book, they relate a history of progression, growth, and development ofAlcoholics Anonymous.

The chapters of the Big Book between "Bill’s Story" andthe stories in the back of the book relate a history of what early AA was like. Ourbeloved Chapter 5, for the first time, put in writing the oral history accounts of theactions that the early members had taken to achieve sobriety and gives a clear history ofthe results they achieved. In writing this chapter, Bill committed to writing for thefirst time the way out for untold millions of alcoholics and assured us that the passageof time and the sharing of millions of individual experiences would not alter thelifesaving message of A lcoholics Anonymous. The Big Book is a recorded sharing ofexperience, a life saving history.

Almost all of our literature is written in this same historicalsetting. Just think of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Pass It On, Dr. Bob and theGood Old Timers, and Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Even our AA Service Manual is ahistory of how the Third Legacy of Service developed. Does history carry the message? Youbet it does! And there is vital AA experience present in each area or Intergroup beinglost each day. Remember, history is formed, not by the actual events that occur, but bythe preservation of records of those events. All else is eventually lost to us as afellowshiip. Collectively, we cannot gain from unrecorded events.

Some may feel that since AA already has ample recorded history, thereis no longer a need to preserve events. However, while our message remains the same,technologies and cultures change over time. Our fellowship has always been aware of thisand our literature keeps pace. That is why each edition of the Big Book carries personalstories of individual members as examples of the present generation.

Bill traveled by train and used a five-cent pay phone to contact Dr.Bob. In recent times, a group chartered a jet plane to Russia to carry the message, andtoday’s message is often carried via e-mail. These are facts from our experience;They need to be recorded and archived.

The history of AA should not be confined to what happened in Akron,Cleveland, and New York in the early days and how the message began to spread around theworld. It is our collective and individual experience today that needs to be recorded andmade a part of our history in an ongoing manner. It is in the recording that we take ourinventory of gross defects as a fellowship, that we see where we have been and begin todiscern where we are going. It is how we may continue to carry our simple message in anundistorted way through modern means and future technology.

Alcoholics Anonymous has grown too large to confine this to only one AAArchives. They are needed in every area of this continent, and in every area of the world,if we are to have records Page 9

that share our collective experience, strength, and hope.

The "Foreword to the Second Edition" continues: "Newgroups started up and it was found, to the astonishment of everyone, that AA’smessage could be transmitted in the mail as well as by word of mouth....Soon AA was besetby...problems on every side and in every groups. But out of this frightening and at firstdisrupting experience the conviction grew that AA had to hang together or die separately.We had to unify our Fellowshiip or pass off the scene. Today the remarkable unity of AA isone of the greatest assets that our Society has."

In "Unity: the Second Legacy" in Alcoholics Anonymous Comesof Age, we read: " Ours is not the usual success story; rather it is the story ofhow, under God’s grace, an unsuspected strength has arisen out of great weakness; andhow, under threats of disunity and collapse, world-wide unity and brotherhood have beenforged. In the course of this experience we have evolved a set of traditional principlesby which we live and work together and relate ourselves as a fellowship to the worldaround us. These principles are called the Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. Theyrepresent the distilled experience of our past, and we rely on them; to carry us in unitythrough the challenges and dangers which the future may bring."

Out of the "distilled experience of our past" evolved ourneed to limit our purpose to one single activity: To carry the message to the alcoholicwho still suffers. How do Area and Intergroup AA Archives cooperate in the singleness ofpurpose?

In 1957, Bill W. said"...We are trying to build up extensiverecords which will be of value to a

future historian...It is highly important that the factual material beplaced in our files in such a way that there can be no substantial distortion..."Bill recognized that preservation of our history ensured the preservation of ourFellowship.

Area and intergroup AA Archives respond to this appeal by focusing ontheir local history, assuring through interviews of early members and their families,through records of meetings, corresponmdence, news articles, etc., that regionalexperience becomes recorded history. The effort extended to collect this data will belost, however, if effort is not made to preserve the documents and other materials.Without archives, the information becomes distorted or deteriorates.

Over time, an AA Archives contributes to the informed group conscienceof an area, allowing groups and service assemblies to learn from past mistakes andsuccesses, so that what is healthy for the Fellowship will continue and what does not workwill not be continuously retried.

"God, I offer myself to Thee--to build and do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve mefrom the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, thatvictory over them may bear wittness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and ThyWay of Life May I do Thy will always!" Amen (Big Book of Alcoholic Anonymous)

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INFORMATION ABOUT THE UPCOMING SECOND QUARTERASSEMBLY AT THE HOLIDAY INN IN MURFREESBORO, Tn.--THE 16th, 17th, and 18th of APRIL 1999.,

The theme for the second quarter assembly in Murfreesboro, TN thisApril will be "Remembering Our Heritage". This is a very special assemblybecause a lot of attention will be directed toward the Area 64 Tennessee State Archives.Several people have been invited from out of state to participate in our celebration ofgratitude. The host committee has spoken to Buford L. in hopes of getting him to speakSaturday night the 17th. at the assembly. Buford as many of you know has been instrumentalin the early beginnings of the Archives. At this point he is scheduled to speak at 8:00O’clock, PM and in the event Buford can’t Charlie M. is the back-up speaker

AGENDA FOR THE AA ARCHIVE DEDICATION CELEBRATIONON SUNDAY DIRECTLY FOLLOWING THE AA BUSINESS MEETING AT THE HOLIDAY INN.

Sunday April 18, 1999 Dedication Ceremony

See you then, Love and God Bless, Your Humble Servant, Pauline L.