Rudy H about Joe H buying the building:
"Joe . . . bought a house at Columbia and Linwood. He was going to remodel this home, and rent it out. Now, before he bought the house, I will tell you that there was a grocery store there, a Mom and Dad grocery store there . . . and then it was a chiropractor's office when Joe bought it.
"Many a drunk has gone through that Columbia and Linwood building. A lot of them have gotten sober over there. Thank God for that.
"Joe donated that building to Alcoholics Anonymous before he died. They formed this group, and it's been there ever since. That is still probably one of the oldest locations in this area as far as a club is concerned."
Bob M about the start of the club house:
"In 66, Joe bought this place, and it was a mess. He was a carpenter, and a darn good one, and he started working on it, and they started having meetings here.
"Joe was very interested in trying to carry the message, and trying to get the word out.
"When I started, there were three meetings here a week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday night. Monday night was closed. They had an Al-Anon meeting upstairs here. It had been two little old bedrooms, and that’s where they had it.
"Eventually they tore the wall out, but Al-Anon would meet on Monday night and they met on Wednesday morning at 11 oclock. So we . . . started a meeting on Wednesday morning at 11 oclock, at the same time the Al-Anon met, for people working nights.
"And then we just slowly added meetings every night. From a period of 67 until, I believe it was 72, that this group split. This group was humongous. By then we were meeting every night, and the only closed meeting was Monday and Wednesday. And they were all speaker meetings. But Wednesday and Friday were open speaker meetings."
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Pat R about how it's changed over the decades:
"The meetings used to be really really large, because there weren't very many meetings around. That changed in the 70s and 80's, particularly the 80's, as so many different meetings got started. But this used to be the place."
