The Twelve Steps Of Alcoholics Anonymous?Who Wrote Them?
The Twelve Steps Of Alcoholics Anonymous?Who Wrote Them?
The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous—Who Wrote Them?
Dick B.
© 2010 Anonymous. All rights reserved
There Were Those Who Didn’t
Cofounder Dr. Bob: One who made it clear that he didn’t write the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous was cofounder Dr. Robert H. Smith (known as “Dr. Bob”). In his last major address to AAs—recorded in The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches: Their Last Major Talks (NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1972, 1975)—Dr. Bob stated:
In the early A.A. days . . . our stories didn’t amount to anything to speak of. When we
started in on Bill D. [A.A. Number Three], we had no Twelve Steps, either; we had no
traditions.
But we were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the Good Book. [p. 13]
It wasn’t until 1938 [three years after A.A. was founded in June 1935] that the teachings and efforts and studies that had been going on were crystallized in the form of the Twelve Steps. I didn’t write the Twelve Steps. I had nothing to do with the writing of them. [p. 14—emphasis added]
“Cofounder” Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr.: Bill Wilson made it clear that his friend Rev. Sam Shoemaker, Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York, was the “wellspring” from which A.A.’s ideas had flowed. [See The Language of the Heart: Bill W.’s Grapevine Writings (NY: The AA Grapevine, Inc., 1988), 177]. Bill finally said concerning Sam:
Having now accounted for AA’s Steps One and Twelve, it is natural that we should ask, “Where did the early AAs find the material for the remaining ten Steps? . . . The spiritual substance of our remaining ten Steps came straight from Dr. Bob’s and my own earlier association with the Oxford Groups, as they were then led in America by that Episcopal rector, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker. [The Language of the Heart, 298]
And Bill even called Shoemaker a “cofounder” of Alcoholics Anonymous. [See Dick B., The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous, Newton ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 1992, 1998), 137.]
There is another and far more important story pertaining to Garrett Stearly, Sam Shoemaker, and Bill Wilson. [Reverend Garrett R. Stearly was a member of the church corporation at Shoemaker’s Calvary Episcopal Church.] Our Oxford Group friend, James Draper Newton, who has been aligned with Buchman, Shoemaker, and the Oxford Group since the early 1920’s, has repeatedly reminded us of two conversations he [Newton] had with Stearly. According to Newton, Stearly twice told him:
Bill Wilson asked Sam Shoemaker to write A.A.’s Twelve Steps. Shoemaker declined. Shoemaker told Bill that the Steps should be written by an alcoholic and that Bill was the one to do it. [See Dick B., The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous: A Design for Living That Works, new, rev. ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 1992, 1995, 1998), 127-28. This statement was made to me several times on the telephone and in person by James Draper Newton of Fort Myers Beach, Florida]
So Sam Shoemaker did not write the Twelve Steps even though he was the principal source for their ideas.
There Were Those Who Gave Bill the Twelve Step Ideas Way Back in 1934
There were at least three people who gave Bill Wilson all the precepts of the Twelve Steps, long before A.A. was founded, and at least six months before Bill met Dr. Bob in May of 1935. See Bill W., Bill W.: My First 40 Years (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2000), 126-69; Bill Pittman and Dick B., compilers and editors, Courage to Change: The Christian Roots of the Twelve-Step Movement (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 1994), 22-23; ‘Pass It On’: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached the World (NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1984), 111-16.
The first was Bill’s friend Ebby Thacher. See Lois Remembers: Memoirs of the co-founder of Al-Anon and wife of the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (NY: Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 1987), 87-88.
Next came Ebby’s Oxford Group friend F. Shepard Cornell. See Courage to Change, 22-23; “Pass It On,”116; Francis Hartigan, Bill W.: A Biography of Alcoholics Anonymous Cofounder Bill Wilson (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 59.
And finally, Rowland Hazard, who had dramatically conveyed the ideas to Shep Cornell and to Ebby, and then directly to Bill. For the most part, these were the little