Sharing the Gift of Recovery in District 14, by Chad P
One of the authors of “Pass It On,” the biography of Bill W, wrote that our co-founder “showed us how to receive the gift of life.” Bill himself might have said that the other co-founder, Dr. Bob, showed us how to share it. In Akron, the two men started working with other alcoholics, and one of them was J.D. H, who came to Evansville in 1938, and helped start AA here—the first group in Indiana, and possibly one of the oldest in the world.
That didn’t happen for two years, though, and before that, J.D. was having meetings with his wife, who he said “is not an alky,” but who “stood solidly back of” him. She told him that he’d find someone if he just kept looking, and that promise began to come true in 1939. He told his story to a doctor who referred him to another one, Joe W. Armed with a freshly printed Big Book, J.D. went to visit him, but got turned away.
The next year, he found the doctor a more willing and captive audience—he’d gotten locked up because of his alcoholism, and could finally see that he had it. Like Bill and Dr. Bob, the two men started working with other drunks quickly, and in April of that year, 1940, started the first AA group in Indiana: the Tristate Group.
The house where it started, J.D.’s at 420 S. Denby, is no longer with us, but, as noted in “Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers,” the group still meets on the same night, Tuesday, that it started. It meets at St. Boniface Church now, and the meeting room has such a sense of history, with the decades of sobriety in the room and the old wood of the room itself, that it’s easy to imagine the meeting starting there.
During the 20 years that followed that start, a lot happened for the closeknit group members and for AA worldwide. The Evansville alcoholics who did find recovery there may have gotten to meet Dr. Bob during a 1941 visit—“the strangest convention in Evansville’s history,” according to the Evansville Press article about it. Bill W is rumored to have come here, too, possibly during his trips to experience AA’s growth and to find support for the 12 Traditions, before they were accepted in 1950, then possibly the 12 Concepts, accepted 5 years later.
This “big small town,” as Pat R calls Evansville, and the surrounding area gained the name District 14, within Area 23. At the same time, alcoholics looking for help, who couldn’t think to look in the phone book, would have had trouble—“they kept it anonymous,” Bob M said, understandably, because “the stigma was something else.”
A little way into the 1960’s, though, that started to change, and maybe the date was in the year 1960 itself, when Joe H got approached, just like Bill W had, by someone who could see he needed help. This time, though, it was a son. He reached his dad just in time, before Joe could go through with his suicide plan. That’s where Joe’s journey into a new life began.
A few years in, he helped that happen for a lot of other alcoholics by buying the building at Columbia and Linwood, fixing it up, and working with others to get meetings going there. Bob M, who was part of it all, remembered “we just slowly added meetings,” and it became what it stayed for years: the place where pretty much every AA member in the area stopped by. It still has several meetings each day, and a real sense of welcome.
A number of special events happened in the 1970’s and ‘80’s, and each one could probably get its own article. Bob M remembers it as 1978 that the Central Office got started, through the efforts of a couple of men in particular, and after a lot of discussion. It didn’t start easily, but it has become a valuable resource for members across a wide area. It not only supplies books and other materials as groups need them, but gives a home to the call service, a storage place for the archives, and a space where members from different places can meet.
A few years after that, the Smile City Group started in Mt. Vernon Indiana—Jerry H, one of the co-founders, helped that happen when he was all of six months sober, encouraged by Jim C, who said it would happen “if the good Lord” willed it. It has lasted for over 30 years now. The Harmony Way group, started shortly after that, has lasted almost that long.
It was at the end of that decade, though, that another very special event happened for the district: the opening of another club. According to Jerry, Jim C was “the spark plug” behind that idea, that also took off with the efforts of Pat M, Jerry L, and, along the way, many more. It went through three versions, each with its own building. In Old Stone 1, members could gather for a more official meeting or possibly pop down to talk with Jim C, who Jerry said had his apartment a floor below.
After that building got demolished, the club was moved into St. Mary’s Church, and Old Stone 2 lasted long enough to help plenty of alcoholics. It moved into the current location, Old Stone III, maybe for good—it’s a building designed for and dedicated to recovery, with a number of rooms for meetings, and plenty of special events to attract happy crowds.
And “happy crowds” might describe the lay of the land here in District 14 now—plenty of meetings in those two club houses and other locations, over 90 listed for Evansville alone. Anyone reaching out for help, like our Responsibility Declaration says, can find it any day of the week here. He or she might come to one of the places mentioned above, or to the Founder’s Group, Health Matters, MPEG, one of the Newburgh meetings—so many places where this journey of recovery can begin, or continue. It’s hard to leave one of those meetings, too, without a handshake, or more.
The gift of recovery is shared here, one day at a time, one drunk to another, like it started. Hopefully it will continue into the far future. Bob M, who hopefully will reach 50 years sober later this year, said it simply, like Dr. Bob would have loved: “We’ll just stick with the Traditions,” he said, and be okay.
