the Official History of AA in Los Angeles

How Alcoholics Anonymous Came to Los Angeles

(From the Southern California Archives Committee, August 1, 1986)

Genevieve Dodge Meets Kaye Miller

In 1939, Genevieve Dodge had a serious drinking problem.

It was not her drinking problem; she was not an alcoholic. The problem she has was other people’s alcoholism. She could not understand why, time after time, persons arrested for being drunk and disorderly, persons sentenced to jail for 30 days, persons battered and bruised and beaten up while drunk would go back out and get drunk again. She wanted them to stop drinking. Why couldn’t they stop drinking?

Genevieve Dodge was a social worker. She was employed as a probation officer in the Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles. She was convinced that alcoholics were not criminals. They were mentally sick. And she was convinced that they could be straightened out. She suggested to Superior Court that alcoholics be given an alternative to the drunk tank. Superior Court Agreed. So, for the first time in this country, an alcoholic could be admitted to the psychiatric ward of the County General Hospital. There he must attend sessions of a special class. It was an experiment.

Could the insanity of alcoholism be treated like any other severe form of mental illness?

Dodge had an equally enthusiastic partner in the experiment. HE was John Howe, a young psychologist and social worker. HE was in the probation department. Howe was convinced that men and women drank alcoholically because they had unconscious conflicts and if these could be explored and resolved in group therapy, the desire to drink would go away. In September 1939, Dodge and Howe started the sessions. It didn’t help. The drunks went to the classes for two hours, five times a week in the hospital. They sobered up. They delved into their lives. They resolved to live sane and decent lives forever more.

And then they went out and got drunk all over again.

Yes, Genevieve Dodge has a very bad drinking problem. She didn’t give up though, and neither did Johnny Howe. They became obsessed with the mystery of alcoholism.

In December, Dodge hear about a lady who was going around Los Angeles giving interviews to newspapers; a crazy lady who claimed she had a book which explained why men and women drank and which had a solution to the problem that was driving Genevieve Dodge and Johnny Howe up the wall.

We know that Alcoholics Anonymous started in Akron, Ohio in June 1935 when two drunks started talking to each other: two male drunks – Bill W. and Bob S.

            Alcoholics Anonymous started in Los Angeles when two women started talking to each other – and neither one was an alcoholic! The lady with the book was Kaye Miller and Genevieve Dodge was the lady looking for a solution to the mystery of alcoholism.

            Kaye Miller’s pursuit of a treatment for alcoholism began when she married Ty Miller, the son of an Ohio industrialist. Ty was a hopeless drunk. She loved him and tried every form of treatment known to dry him out and keep him sober. He got worse.

The Big Book Comes to Los Angeles

            Ty’s lawyer had a friend in Akron who told them about Bill W. and Dr. Bob’s recovery and the Akron Group. Kaye phoned Bill W. in New York. She said Ty was sober at the moment and she wanted to bring him to New York. He was a periodic drinker. Bill W. suggested that she postpone hitting him with the idea of Alcoholics Anonymous until he was coming out of his next drunk. Well, Ty remained sober two years. They moved to Los Angeles to begin life all over again and, as Kaye later said, “Ty went on a drunk here to end all drunks. It lasted four months. He couldn’t get out of it this time. He was scared and desperate. I was at the end of my rope . . . ‘

            She had forgotten about Bill W. But he hadn’t forgotten her. In those days, prospects were rare. Ruth Hock, Bill’s secretary, kept every inquiry on file and follow-ups were made.
            In May 1939, the first draft of the original book version of “Alcoholics Anonymous” was completed. In order to raise money for its publication, 400 copies of the manuscript had been mimeographed and were sent to interested parties who were asked to by shares in the Works Publishing Company, which would print the book. (Bill W. and Bob S. called it the “Works Publishing Company” because they believed they had the first program for alcoholics that “really works.”)

            Kaye received one of the first copies of the manuscript. She didn’t read the book, but strangely enough, Ty Miller did. He said it was the first time he had ever seen something which understood him – who he was and why he drank. He said this book was talking about him.

            Kaye saw something in her husband’s eyes she had never seen before. She did not have the patience to read the book, but she wanted to get her drunken husband to an AA meeting. She wired the New York office and they replied, “There is no group west of Akron, Ohio.”

            So she and Ty pulled up stakes and went to Akron and from there to New York. She would get the answers to her husband’s problems right from the man at the top - - From Bill W. himself. She finally cornered Bill W. in the office and asked him how she could maker her husband stop drinking.

            He shocked her. Instead of talking about Ty’s problems, he talked about hers. He told her she was spiritually bankrupt. She must let go of her husband. “Bill told me,” she recollected, “that I had been an extremely bad wife because I had broken all his falls for him and never let him hit bottom.” She listened. For the first time this arrogant woman had met a man who humbled her because of his own spiritual strength and unselfishness.

            She went to her first A.A. meeting in New York. She said goodbye to Bill W. and told him: “I’m going home to Los Angeles, and if Ty can stay sober on these 12 steps of yours for 6 months, I’m going to beat the drum for Alcoholics Anonymous up and down the state of California, I swear to God.”

            Bill smiled. He handed her the hard cover First Edition of “Alcoholics Anonymous” (the Big Book) in its yellow and red jacket and its garish red binding.

            She returned to Los Angeles by ship and now, for the first time, she read the book. She made a decision. “I didn’t give a hoot whether Ty stayed sober drunk. That’s his life. My own life was just beginning! I only knew that the most important thing was that never again should a wife (or any non-alcoholic in the position I’d been in) have to cross the country to find help. Yes, I could tell them in California that I had personally seen 50 or 60 people who used to be drunks, who were now sober and had been for a long time. I could say this and say I had seen it with my own eyes. I could tell them that it was all in this book and the very least I would do was tell them what I had found, if I did nothing else the rest of my life.”

            It was this book that Kaye Miller gave to Genevieve Dodge – who then gave it to Johnny Howe.

Pete C. – The First L.A. – A.A.

            The strangest thing about the first edition was the last chapter. It was called, “Lone Endeavor.” It was the story of a man in, of all places, Los Angeles. Yes, the first drunk in Los Angeles, who sobered up on the 12 steps and whose story was in the book, was a person named Pete C. So even before A.A. came to Los Angeles in the form of meetings, it had already come to L.A. through the written word. Here’s how that happened:

Pete C.’s mother had heard about A.A. She wrote to New York and received a rough draft of the first two chapters of the book. When the manuscript was completed, Bill W. sent Pete C.’s mother a copy of the mimeographed edition. Bill W. wrote, “We would appreciate hearing about your son’s condition and his reaction to this volume. Won’t you please write us?”

Pete C. wrote back to New York and told them the story of his recovery. It was the first time an alcoholic had found the answer through, and only through, the Big Book. It was not reprinted in the later editions.

Pete C.’s sobriety was a milestone in A.A. history because it proved that you did not need direct contact to recover. This was the start of what became the Loners and Internationals group. People, who work in lonely jobs like the shipping trades, for example, could stay sober in the field. Through corresponding with the Loners and Internationals office at A.A.’s General Service Office in New York, they maintain their link with Alcoholics Anonymous.

The First AA Meeting in L.A.

Johnny Howe read the book “Alcoholics Anonymous.” He invited Kaye Miller to join the meetings of the psycho class for alcoholics. She talked the straight A.A. program as she had learned it from the book and her meeting with Bill W. Johnny laid out the psychological aspects of the disease. Among the first converts was Barney H., who was sobering up on the psychopathic ward of County General Hospital. (There was no alcoholic ward at that time.)

            By 1939, Kay Miller had divorced Ty. She was living in a small house on Benicia Street in Westwood. Chuck and Lee T., a couple from New York, arrived in Los Angeles. Bill W. had given them Kaye’s number. Kaye decided it was time to have a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in Los Angeles. The first meeting of A.A. in Los Angeles too place on December 19, 1939 at her home on Benicia Street. Nobody knew exactly how to run a meeting, but Kaye knew there had to be coffee and doughnuts. Besides Kaye, Johnny Howe, three other non-alcoholic social workers, Ethel and Barney H., Chuck and Lee T., Chauncey and Edna C., Joy S., Dwight S., Walter K. and Hal S. attended the first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in Los Angeles.

            Kaye Miller telegraphed Bill W, “Los Angeles held its first meeting tonight. Fifteen present.”

            On January 19, 1940, after Hal S. became sober for good, he started carrying the message to Lincoln Heights jail. He attended every meeting of A.A. in the area. Hal S. was one of the first Angelenos to get sober and remain sober.

            In the Central Office Archives on South Harvard Boulevard, you can look at a torn and faded copy of the first edition of “Alcoholics Anonymous.” This is the very book that Bill W. gave to Kaye Miller, who gave it to Genevieve Dodge, who gave it to Johnny Howe, who gave it to Hal S. Estelle S presented it to the Los Angeles Central Office in 1977. On the flyleaf she wrote:

            “This is the original A.A. book brought by Kaye Miller to Los Angeles. I am not certain of the exact date when Kate gave the book to Johnny Howe. Hal entered the County General Hospital On Friday, January 15 (1940) and left Tuesday, Janueary19. Hal must have been the first person to read this (book), probably January 16 through 18. Eventually Johnny gave the book to him.”

A.A. Catches On

            Kaye continued to hold meetings at her place and at other people’s homes. The meetings were informal and were by invitation. They were also rather disorganized. Very few people maintained their sobriety. Mrs. Miller became discouraged. Drunks came to a meeting or two and returned to their alcoholic habits. Had the experimental psycho class failed? Was putting drunks in jail the only way to get them off the streets? Kaye went to Hawaii to think about starting another meeting. She really had no heart for it. Would there ever be a person like Bill W. who could light a fire for A.A. in this city?

            There was.

            He was not in Los Angeles at that time: he was living in Denver. He was a stockbroker by the name of Mort J. who was almost 80 years of age when he passed away June 16, 1984. Mort J. was a violent drunk, a blackout drunk and a geographic drunk. He wanted to change his life. He knew he was powerless over alcohol.

            Mort J. had attempted to treat his condition in hospitals and sanitariums. He had been in a long treatment process with a Denver doctor who specialized in alcoholism and drug addiction diseases. Mort J. seemed to be incurable. He always went back and drunk once again.

            Then, in 1939, the doctor got a copy of the first edition of “Alcoholics Anonymous.“ He showed it to Mort J., who ordered a copy from New York.

            Mort J. read the opening chapters while he was sipping whiskey. By the time he had gotten to Chapter 3, “More About Alcoholism,” he wasn’t reading. He was living it.

            Well, someday, somehow, he would read this book and sober up, live a good, clean life and become a very rich Denver stockbroker. But, meanwhile, there was still another bottle to kill and another trip to take. He went to Los Angeles. He saw his brother in Los Angeles. He was driving drunk, of course. He drove for weeks in a blackout. From Los Angeles, he drove through California and Arizona. He vaguely remembered, as through a shot glass darkly, crossing the Mexican border at Nogales, drinking in a bar at Guyamas and another one in Hermosillo and back to Nogales. Then he found himself in Palm Springs, where he did the same thing he did in Hermosillo or Nogales or Denver.

            He drank.

            One morning, in Palm Springs, Mort J. awakened and he was shaking. His nerves were coming through his skin and he needed a drink or he would die. There were only empty bottles in his hotel room. He didn’t even know where he was, for sure. He started ransacking his suitcases. Then he saw a copy of “Alcoholics Anonymous” which he had forgotten he packed.

            Instead of waiting until the liquor shops opened he read the book. He never knew what made him do this. He read the book from the first page to the last page, to the story about Pete C., Lone Endeavor.

            Then he fell into a deep sleep. When he awakened, he went outside and had the first good meal he had eaten in a long time. He had bacon and eggs and coffee. Then he went back to his room. He read “Alcoholics Anonymous” a second time.

            From that day on, he never had another drink.

On Fire

            Now, a fire burned inside him. He had to carry the message. He drove home to Denver to start a meeting. He told his fiancée he was sober, but she did not believe him. She broke off the engagement. (Later – much later, Frances married him.) Broken-hearted but sober, Mort J. came to Los Angeles. He telephoned A.A. in New York and Ruth Hock gave him Kaye Miller’s number and the address where she lived and had meetings. He went over.

            “Where’s the meeting?” he asked.

            “There are no meetings any more,” Kaye said. “I’m disgusted. I’m going to Hawaii or Europe.”

            “Where are all the members of A.A.?” he asked.

            “They’re all drunk,” she said, bitterly.

            “Do you have any names for me?” he asked. “I want to get in touch with some alcoholics in town.”

            “You’re wasting your time,” she said. She had been cleaning out her apartment. She had thrown all her index cards with the names of A.A. prospects and all the inquiry letters into a wastebasket. Mort J. cleaned out her wastebasket. His pockets full of cards and letters, he departed. Kaye’s last words to him were, “ Don’t waste your time on them. I’ve called on them all. They can’t stay sober.”

            Mort J. started walking home. On his way, as he saw from one of the cards, was the address of Cliff W., whose wife, Dorothe, had written to A.A. in New York for help. Dorothe had read about the group in Beatrice Fairfax’s syndicated column. (She was the “Dear Abby” of her period.)

            As Mort J. walked to the Walker home, he did not realize that the entire burden of making A.A. live in Los Angeles had now fallen on him. He was a quiet, soft-spoken person. He was a Harvard college man. He was dressed in a dignified way. He looked like a bank president. He rang the bell at the home of Dorothe and Cliff W. Cliff W. answered the doorbell.

           

“My name is Mort J. I’m a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. May I come in?”

            Cliff W. started listening to Mort J.’s story. Cliff had no desire to stop drinking or to go to meetings, but he was spellbound as Mort told him the story of his last roaring drunk from Colorado to Mexico to Palm Springs. Mort J. Said that, as he understood it, he could not remain sober unless he carried the message to other alcoholics. Would Cliff W. come to a meeting if he could organize a meeting?

            Well, Cliff W. kind of liked this high-class gent. As a favor to him, but more, to help Mort J. stay sober, he said he would do it.

            Years later, Cliff W. said, “I had no desire to join Alcoholics Anonymous. But I had to see Mort again. He attracted me. And years later when Bill W. came out with the 11^th tradition, I realized how true it was when he said,

“A.A.is a program of attraction rather than promotion. And I believe this attraction starts with the man who makes the 12^th step call . . . Always when I call on a new guy I shave and clean up, put on a tie and coat, try to look good, even if it’s a drunk tank, I’m going to or the alcoholic ward in a hospital, because, after meeting me, if he’s attracted enough, he might come to his first A.A. meeting, just to please me 0 the way I went to Mort’s meeting, just to please him. Because there was something about him that drew me . . .”

            Looking around for a meeting place, Mort J. got in touch with Dr. Ethel Leonard. She worked with alcoholics. She happened to be the house physician for Cecil Hotel on Main Street. Through the good offices of Dr. Leonard, Mort J. rented a large room on the mezzanine for $5.00. This was the first public meeting of A.A, and it was in the heart of Skid Row. It was on a Friday at 8 PM, in March of 1940. It was open to all who had a desire to stop drinking. Ted Le Berthon, a columnist on the Los Angeles Daily news, wrote about the meeting in his column.

“I chose this location,” Mort J. recalls, “because the price was right and there was a good psychological reason for holding a meeting down there because I knew it would show us where we were headed unless we did something about it. That was our destination, Skid Row, the drunk tank, sleeping in the alleys and under the bridges, winos, dead men . . . “

            Present besides Mort J. were Cliff W. and about ten men, men who had failed to sober up at Johnny Howe’s classes and Kaye Miller’s meetings. He pleaded with them to give A.A. one more chance.

            Mort did not know how an A.A. meeting should be conducted. There was no coffee and no doughnuts. All he had was his copy of  “Alcoholics Anonymous.” He asked if anybody present would like to read a few pages. Nobody volunteered. So Mort J. opened the book to Chapter 5 and started reading, “Rarely have we seen a person fail who . . .”

            That is how the practice of reading a portion of Chapter 5 started in Southern California.

            A month later, Mort got a letter from Frank R., who was in a sanatorium in Phoenix, Arizona. He lived in Los Angeles. He wanted to know if it was true that A.A. helped the alcoholic at no charge. Mort J. invited him to come to the Cecil Hotel on Friday night when he got home and find out for himself. The next meeting Frank R. arrived, together with his attendant. He was now in a Compton sanatorium and was not allowed to out without a guard. He was a dangerous man when he was drunk.

            Mort J. remembers Frank as a fierce, rough guy. He never smiled. He looked like one of those strong silent types who played in Westerns, a Gary Cooper or John Wayne type. He had a question for Mort J. after the meeting.

            “What keeps you sober, Friend?”

            “To the best of my belief it is trying to practice the principles of the book.”

“Yeah? No kidding? And all these men here tonight, what the hell keeps them sober, if they are sober, which I doubt?”

“The same thing.”

“I’d like to help you.”

“I need all the help I can get.”

            Mort J. visited him in the Compton sanatorium three times. The first two times, Frank R. had a bottle of Gordon’s gin in his bed. The third time, he was sober. Frank R. became part of the team.

            And so it was on these three rocks – Mort J. Cliff W. and Frank R. – that the house of A.A. in Los Angeles was built. The A.A. number in the Los Angeles telephone directory was the Cliff and Dorothe W.

A.A. Grows

            They set up a meeting at the Embassy Hotel, where they moved from the Cecil; then to the Elks Club, to the Regent Hotel and to the Parkview Manor at 2799 West 7^th Street.

            Frank R. was a driving force in the fellowship. He had been a successful executive with the Southern Pacific Railroad. Cliff remembered him “as the hardest-looking hombre I ever saw. He was cold and tough. He had these bulging eyes behind thick glasses.” He became one of the most passionate 12-steppers that ever lived. Cliff W. always said that it was Frank’s example and teaching which imbued him with the love the 12-step work. Hard as it is for those of us who remember Cliff W. during the 1970’s when he was a powerful and charming speaker, a smiling, loving and kindly man, in the pioneer days he was a “shy, introverted and scared” person. He was afraid of knocking on strange doors and talking to wet drunks. Frank R. had no fears. He was also a tough sponsor. He founded what Norm A. liked to call the Los Angeles College of Hard-Hearted Sponsors. Frank r. was the first of a long line of uncompromising A.A. members who lived in the conviction that their lives had been given back to them in order to be of service to the alcoholic who was still suffering.

            Once, recalled Cliff, when over q00 inquiries had piled up, Frank too him on the rounds for two weeks all over the county.

           

            “We went into jails and we went into hospitals and insane asylums,” Cliff said. “We went into dumps and we went into mansions and, well, all over the place. And Frank wasn’t afraid of man or beast. I remember one time a man wanted to give us a check for $500 and Frank refused it. He said to me that in A.A. you don’t ever get obligated for more than a cup of coffee. A.A. had saved this man’s life. He wanted to make a big donation. Frank showed me that love and service are not for sale.”

            They fought hard to get drunks to stay sober. They treasured every new member they got. Roy Y., who subsequently moved to Texas, was active in the Los Angeles meetings of A.A. during this period. He remembers that they had a Goon Squad, which was set up to, corral any member who got drunk and they rode herd on him until he sobered up. They once got a call from a member’s wife in West Los Angeles. She said her spouse was drunk again. They sent out the Goon Squad to an address they had. They rang the doorbell. Nobody answered. They went around to the back door, which was open. They went in. They looked for the drunk. There was a man in paint-spotted overalls sleeping in a bedroom. They picked him up and took him to a restaurant and made him drink coffee. He kept telling them to leave him alone and he didn’t want the coffee. Then they dragged him to a meeting. The man was definitely intoxicated. He thought the meeting was interesting, but he was the wrong man. They had gone to the wrong house. The man was a house painter who had gotten drunk while painting a room He had been taking a little siesta when the Goon Squad captured him. Roy Y., who sobered in Texas in February 1940 and came to Los Angeles in August of that year, believes that the man became sober and never had another drink.

            By the time, in March of 1941 when Jack Alexander’s article on Alcoholics Anonymous appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, the Los Angeles organization was already in position. Hundreds of inquiries started coming in. They were a small band of men, these pioneers, but they were tempered by their experiences and know-how to outwit the alcoholics at their self-destructive games.
            Among those who came in at this time, and who were known as the Saturday Evening Post Class of 1941, were Al M. and Sybil C. Sybil C. phoned the A.A. number and was given Cliff W. She was drunk when she called. She asked him to send the A.A. ambulance and was indignant when she was told there were no A.A. ambulances. Later, he became her sponsor. Frank R. was Cliff’s sponsor and Mort J. was everybody’s sponsor. Sybil C. was the first woman to get sober and stay sober in Los Angeles. She now took all the 12-step calls for women. She became a passionate bearer of the message.

            Al M. was a trombonist who played in the movie studio orchestras. He was a tall, good-looking man and, when he was infected with the spirit of sobriety, he became another driving, impassioned A.A. worker, who was a magnetic speaker and a hard-hearted sponsor.

            So through these and other members, A.A. increased in numbers. Bu the end of 1941, there were about 500 members in Los Angeles.

Bill and Lois Come to L.A.

            By 1943 the membership was large enough to hold a big meeting. Money was raised to bring Lois and Bill W. here. The date was November 6, 1943. The place was the American Legion Hall on Highland Avenue.

            Reporting on his arrival in the Los Angeles Times on November 3, 1943, they described Bill W. as a “tall, lanky Easterner who requested that his name not be divulged nor his photograph taken . . . “

            The article stated that there were “13 groups in Los Angeles County, each of which meets once a week.’ The membership was estimated to be 1500. There was no Central Office in 1943 to keep track.

            On Saturday Night, the hall was filled with a thousand happy, sober men and women. From the wings, backstage, Bill W. stood beside Mort J. He pulled the curtain a little so he could peek at the great throng. He shivered. He now knew that Alcoholics Anonymous could cress the rivers and the deserts and come over the mountains.

            And to Mort J. he murmured, “Nothing can stop us now!”