Unlocking the Vault [Season 1, Episode 6]

- The views and opinions expressed during this podcast are those of our guests. No one person speaks for A.A. as a whole. - Nestled in the heart of the General Service Office lies the Archives Department. In Episode Two, we took you on a tour of GSO, but didn't have enough time to include the most popular part of the tour, the GSO Archives.

Each GSO tour concludes at the Archives, because our visitors always want time to explore the displays and check out the cool artifacts that make A.A. history. So let's see how our primary purpose evolved. My name is Nathan and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to GSO's Archives. (upbeat music) The Archives Department is part reference library, part storage facility, and part museum. Let's sit down and walk around with some folks who know a thing or two about the GSO Archives.

- Hi, my name is Michelle Mirza and I am the Archives Director at the General Service Office. - I'm April Hegner, I am the Special Collections Archivist here at the GSO Archives. - Hi, I am Zoe Blecher-Cohen, Assistant Archivist. - Hi, I am Kyle Zaczek, I'm Associate Archivist. - I'm Jamie Fritz, Digital Archivist. - To paraphrase the mission, we collect, organize, preserve, and make the archives available and accessible to researchers.

- So what types of materials and documents do you typically handle here at Archives? - Possibly every type of material that exists from reels, cassettes, CDs, vinyl records, and also digital files. There are, you know, non-textual materials such as photographs and slides and microfilms. - We were also taken on a tour. Here's April again. - Welcome to the Archives. - So the first thing that we see is this wall of six black and white photographs. Can you tell me about this?

- It's the first panel on our timeline of A.A. history. So it starts with Bill W., one of our co-founders and his wife, Lois. One of the first photographs you'll see is Bill in his army uniform, which was about 1918. And then next to those are Bill and Lois on their wedding day, which was also in 1918, Bill is again wearing his army uniform and Lois is in her wedding dress.

- So 17 years before the founding of A.A. - One of my favorite photographs is a picture of Lois in the yard at her home in Clinton Street in Brooklyn, which is still there today, although it is a private residence. - Right. Heads up before knocking on the door. - Yes, and she's standing against a brick wall and there are a couple of plants around her and she was a very avid gardener.

So there we are seeing her standing there and she has a little twisted wire, or twisted hanger in one of her arms and there is a string attached to it. - This is an early selfie. - This is an early selfie, because Lois pulled that wire attached to the string, which pulled the shutter of the camera. - That's great. Very cool. Oh, and I see the next picture is the famous motorcycle shot. So is this the picture from the trip Bill and Lois took around the country in 1925?

- Correct. - I know this one. Here's Lois telling her side of things at the 1955 International Convention. - We set out on a motorcycle for a year's trip and we packed all our worldly belongings on this motorcycle and we really were a funny sight. It was a motorcycle with a sidecar of course, and Bill didn't like to drive very much, and I did. I loved to drive. (everyone laughs) And he used to sit in the bathtub with his feet hanging over the bow of the bathtub.

And I was driving and I was a little peanut and this great long thing in the bathtub. We were really awfully funny looking. - That was kind of one of the geographicals that Lois tried to do with Bill. They would go out on motorcycle trips early in the years of their early marriage to try to cure Bills alcoholism, which unfortunately did not work. (light music) - The Archives was officially opened in November, 1975.

There was this wonderful ribbon cutting ceremony that our very first archivist was there, non-alcoholic Nell Wing. Now, Nell Wing was not always our archivist. - Nell was 29 at the time she started at GSO then it was called the Alcoholic Foundation. She served as receptionist and did other clerical work before becoming Bill's secretary in 1950. At the time of her arrival, the three room office had 13 people working there, including Bill.

It was a time when A.A.'s traditions were just beginning to emerge. The General Service Conference was still in it's discussion phase and the board of trustees of the Alcoholic Foundation, now the General Service Board, was just starting to figure out it's role. Nell soon recognized the importance of Bill's correspondence and other material.

She began going through his waste basket to retrieve and squirrel away material that would eventually be a basis for GSO's archives and be indispensable to scholars, writers and A.A. members in the years to come. - And I think it's absolutely remarkable that the early staff, namely Nell Wing, thought to save these precious letters. (upbeat music) - In this podcast, we respect the anonymity of A.A. members. Last names are shared only for those who are not in A.A. - How do researchers or members

of the public access materials in the A.A. Archives? - Anyone can come in and look at the exhibits, or look at any published material. However, if a researcher or anyone's interested in conducting onsite research of the unpublished material, there is an application form and procedures around that. - So we go next, right in this way to our reading room, slash, library. - The reading room, lots of books up on the wall in the bookshelf.

And we have a big table here and some cabinets full of books over here and this couch? - Yes, so that is Bill W.'s couch. It was in his office in a previous location. We moved to this location in 1992. So Bill was never in this office, but his couch is. - He sat on this couch? - He did. - Can I sit on this couch? - You may. We encourage visitors to please have a seat on it. It has been refurbished, so it does look really new.

It's made from brown leather and has some kind of gold rivets on the side. - Excellent, what's this room used for? - Primarily, it is our library. So we have several bookshelves that are filled with books that are either related to alcoholism, or written by alcoholics, or written by researchers who have used our archives to research their book. - Who visits the Archives? - So most of the time it's regular A.A. members who are coming to visit the GSO.

Perhaps they're coming to the 11 o'clock meeting on Fridays. Perhaps they're just wanting to take a tour. - A lot of members are interested in how A.A. started in their own area or district. We might have a member who's interested in, how did A.A. come to New Jersey. Who were the founding members and they, we would provide them with that early correspondence. - Well, we also get researchers. - PhD students, studying some aspect of alcoholism. - We get authors.

- There are professional documentarians who are interested in producing a film, or a documentary about the co-founders or about A.A. - We get people from U.S., Canada, Mexico. - There's a lot of requests for Bill's writing on spirituality, on depression and all of those topics. - This year alone have had visitors from Scotland and Ukraine and Poland. - Speaking of A.A. internationally, and this back wall is covered in pictures from International Conventions.

We have another one coming up here in 2025, but I can see the picture of the first one here, going back to 1950 in Cleveland, Ohio. Is that about right? - Yeah, so I can speak to that a little bit. - Here's Zoe, Assistant Archivist. - One of the interesting things that you can also see with a lot of the early International Convention photos is that if you look at the right angle, you can see that there are some people actually penciled in to kind of fill out the panoramic view.

- So wait, this photo, it's true. If you look closely at the photographs of the earliest International Conventions, you can see that some of the figures sitting in the audience are not really there. Silhouettes have been etched into the empty seats. - Yes, to flesh out the audience a little bit. - It does, it makes it look a little bit more full. - The back of people's heads.

- Certainly not necessary for the pictures these days when you compare it to this picture in front of me from 1985 where it's a whole stadium full of people. - And you can also see we have pretty much every International Convention except for the most recent International Convention in 2020, which obviously didn't happen 'cause of COVID. And so instead we have a poster from the virtual experience that happened instead. - "2020, A.A. International Convention, a Virtual Experience."

Yes, I know everyone's looking forward to coming back to that in person in 2025. (upbeat music) As we heard about in Episode Three, the International Convention is a huge event that brings together about 50,000 alcoholics from around the world along with their friends and family every five years. The next one is coming up July 3rd through the 6th, 2025 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

If you are interested in joining us for this incredible celebration of A.A., you can find more information at aa.org. Michelle seemed to have an endless supply of impactful stories from past International Conventions. Here's one: - It was the 80th anniversary convention in 2015 in Georgia. And I was asked to present two minutes from the Archive's Sunday morning session.

And in the green room just before my presentation, there was a member who was in custody at the time who spoke right after me, but he was also in the green room. And for me, that was the reality of alcoholism. He was in jail. Over here, working in this office, I see the success stories, right? I see our Staff members. There are other folks, but also the people who come in, that was very affecting for me. That was the reality of alcoholism, the effects of it, the consequences.

And I would never forget how that made me feel. (light music) - One of the wonderful things about all these images is that it gives you a great idea of how A.A. has grown over the years and the decades. Going from a small auditorium to filling giant stadiums. - You start here with a couple of hundred people and then you have thousands of people. And by this picture you have tens of thousands of people. How many countries is A.A. in now? - A.A. is in approximately 180 countries around the world.

And if you look over here to our A.A. Around the World exhibit, you can see some items from other countries. One of my favorite items here is a piece from Japan in 1947. It's a Christmas greeting card from Tokyo. It's actually written on rice paper. And they say, "Terrific field here for A.A. may start a group, we'll write you soon about this if it develops. Best wishes for the new year." - All the way in Japan.

There's also Australia, India, South Africa, New Zealand, Cuba, Cambodia, and England. This is a great exhibit. (light music) And what do we got here? - This exhibit case is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the publication of the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions book. - So are these some of the original manuscripts? - Yes. So a couple of things here we have include handwritten text from Bill himself. And then we have some of the typewritten pages.

And then you have some handwritten edits where you can kind of see how things kind of evolved and changed over time before it was published, edited and polished. Bill was a big fan of handwriting. A lot of his correspondence and the texts, he would have his big yellow legal pad and he would write out notes on that. The 12 Tradition Essays were originally published in the Grapevine in the late 1940s.

And then were compiled along with this 12 Step Essays into the 12 and 12, which was released in 1953. (upbeat music) - So this is a pretty colorful display over here. - Oh, I can take that one. - Associate Archivist, Kyle. - So this is our ICYPAA display. One of the rotating exhibits that we have here. - ICYPAA, I-C-Y-P-A-A stands for- - International Conference of Young People in A.A. It started here originally in Niagara Falls, New York.

- What year was that? - 1958, some of- - There are a lot of fun items in this display that are reflective of the great energy brought to A.A. by it's Fellowship of Young People, along with original letters from Bill regarding the early conference, there are great commemorative items like hats, a chrome lighter and a mug. - The conference was held in Philadelphia in 1976. So there is a Liberty Bell Freedom mug. - As well as a T-shirt from the 25th annual conference held in 1982.

- There's a slogan on the front of the shirt that says, "Young is anyone who still has growing to do." - Can you speak to why the Conference for Young People in A.A. was founded? What was the drive for that? - It was founded for the purpose of providing a setting for an annual celebration of sobriety among young people in A.A. Since the inception, a growing group of people who first would not consider themselves as young people has become regular attendance at the conference. - That's great.

It makes sense that the International Conference of Young People in A.A. has a very colorful display. This is a lot of fun. - Thanks Kyle. - Of course, anytime. (light music) - How do you decide which items, or documents are important to keep in the Archives? - Great question. We are guided by our collection scope and policy, which provides guidance on what materials we collect. - Are there any particularly historic, or significant items in the A.A. Archives that stand out to you?

- Yes. (laughs) I would say the early group correspondence, as well as the early records created by the Alcoholic Foundation and the Alcoholic Foundation is the predecessor to the General Service Board. Those records are the building blocks of A.A.'s structure of A.A.'s history.

In essence, the early group records contain letters from thousands of alcoholics seeking help, or letters from a family member, a doctor or some other professional writing to the office circa late 1930s through the 1950s. And just to share an experience around why I think this is also special and also especially affecting, I was at the 2005 Toronto International Convention, there was this older member who was hanging around the archives for a while.

Throughout the course of those couple of days, I got to know him, little bit of his life and the business that he and his wife ran. But he used this terminology that I remember from since 2005. He said, "We're just a bunch of crazy coconuts." So about nine months after that convention, I was doing some research in the files and back then we did not have the correspondence digitized. Right? So if you wanna find something, you're reading all the letters to find what you're looking for.

Now, you're just looking for a search term, because the letters are digitized. And as I'm reading through the letters, I came across the term, "crazy coconuts," and I was just, that to me was just like, who else uses that term? And I started to read now the entire letter. And would you believe that letter was written in 1950 by the member's wife who wrote to our office seeking help for her husband? And what about that's such full circle.

I still remember it, that story, and I just, it just brings tears, just very affecting. (upbeat music) - One of our favorite items and most popular is this typewriter here. It's very small. And it was used to help type the Big Book manuscript by Ruth Hawk, who was the first secretary and a non-alcoholic. - The first edition of the Big Book, the manuscript, was typed out on this typewriter?

- Correct. - And I would imagine that visitors wouldn't get a chance to type on this typewriter, would they? - No, we do not let them do that, no. - But could we? (typewriter keys clicking) Dear listener, we give you the sound of the Big Book manuscript being typed on this early 20th century manual typewriter, beginning May, 1938. (upbeat music) So what have we got in the back? - So this is an area that we don't normally take visitors into, but for you, we'll invite you in. - All right.

- So here you will find the heart of our collection. These are materials that we use on a daily basis to conduct our research. This is our main storage area. We have one onsite storage area, and then we have two offsite storage areas. - This is a room that is filled with file boxes, probably can, I guess, a thousand of them, more? - Probably. We measure in cubic feet, and we just completed an inventory and we have approximately 2,700 cubic feet of material in our archive.

- Not a lot of room to spare in here. - Not a lot, we are a growing collection. Just last year we accessioned about 350 new items. - Wow. - We have a manuscript collection, which has been given to us by one donor. So we keep all those together. We also have a lot of group records. We have early group records that go back to the late 1930s to approximately the 1950s. And then we have newer group records that kind of pick up from there and go forward.

We try to maintain every single item that AAWS publishes. We collect everything in English, French, and Spanish, which is the three languages of the office. But we also produce things in other languages as well. And we do maintain those. We have a collection of General Service Conference materials, the World Service Meeting, which was first held in 1969.

We have recordings from various International Conventions, and we also have various recordings of Bill W. (upbeat music) - For more information about A.A., please visit our website at aa.org. - Have you faced any unique challenges in preserving, or organizing the archival materials? - There are several on my list, but I think one of the most profound challenges that I have experienced, and given that we were mostly inherently paper-based collection, is archiving digital materials.

We had to relearn how to archive digital materials, because there is so much to learn about the nature of digital materials. And so fortunately we have a trained digital archivist now who can help us muddle through that and bring us up to speed in this digital era. - Yeah, that does seem like a considerable challenge. Are there any upcoming projects, or initiatives in the Archives Department that you're particularly excited about?

- Yes. (laughs) One large and certainly long-term, a five-year plus project, is assessing the extent of our audio-visual collection and making some decisions on those materials. My staff recently conducted an inventory of the entire collection to assess it's size. And a quick takeaway from this project that I can share is that while we continue to expand digitally, our paper-based materials continue to grow. So the final results of that inventory will help inform decisions about use of space.

And then certainly we're digitizing Bill's correspondence, board and all the conference-related work. The digital files will of course help to enhance our search capabilities, as well as serve as a preservation format of that material. Moreover, Bill's correspondence is one of those open for access materials so we really try to limit our researchers handling original documents. So it's very important for us to be able to digitize, preserve, and produce access copies for our researchers.

- Meanwhile, in the back of the back room. And what is this? - This is our fireproof safe. It's approximately five feet tall and probably about three, or four feet wide. And it contains some of our oldest books. - Can we take a look inside? - Sure. (safe clicks) (safe creaks) - Whoa. Oh, the smell of old books. - It's one of my favorite smells. - Wow. Can you tell us what we're looking at here?

- We have our first editions, our first printings, second printings, third printings, and then we have second editions and third editions. Additionally, we have first editions and first printing, second printing, third printing, et cetera of 12 Steps and 12 Traditions. We have some Experience, Strength and Hope and then- - Michelle, you've been working here almost 25 years. Have there been any especially impactful moments that you could share about?

- It's the reaction of visitors when they come into the archives. They're so grateful. They share their stories. There are some visitors who had never seen photographs of our co-founders, or things that we take for granted, like the letters between Bill and Young, or Dr. Silkworth and Towns Hospital. All of that that we take for granted, because we know the story and for them, it's novel and for them it's an experience. And just hearing that, "I have saved so much just to come over here."

Or, "This was part of my destination." That to me it, it never gets lost. It's very humbling. (upbeat music) - We hope that you come and visit the GSO Archives in person, but if you aren't able to, be sure to check out our online archives exhibit at aa.org. We hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Be sure to subscribe so you can keep coming back.

- Thank you for listening to Our Primary Purpose, a podcast produced by the General Service Office on behalf of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in the U.S. and Canada.