Today Easy Does It, along with One Day at a Time, First Things First, Live and Let Live and Think, Think, Think adorn the walls of AA meeting rooms and clubs around the globe. Few realize that Alcoholics Anonymous “borrowed” Easy Does It, One Day at a Time and Live and Let Live from Emmet Fox. The early members of what would become Alcoholics Anonymous* who lived in New York attended Fox’s meetings on Wednesday nights. Emmet Fox held his Wednesday meetings and Saturday services in the largest rentable public venues available in New York, the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, the Hippodrome, Steinway Hall even Madison Square Garden as attendance grew continuing right up to the beginning of World War II when large gatherings were suspended. Most, if not all early AA members** everywhere knew of Dr Fox’s teaching through his two best sellers The Sermon on the Mount and Power Through Constructive Thinking (both still in print) and Sparks of Truth (out of print) a collection of teachings originally published as a series of 10 cent pamphlets. It is in these pamphlets that the mottoes adopted by AA can be found.
*Though AA dates its birth from 6/10/35 the first AA meeting (the group stated they had no other affiliation and was for those suffering from alcoholism only) did not take place until 5/11/39 in Cleveland Ohio, the secretary Clarence Snyder, a few months after the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous) was published. Source: Bill and Lois Wilson‘s personal correspondence in archives.
**Bill Wilson sponsored (helped sober up)Emmet Fox’s secretaries son, Al Steckman. Al would go on to be the first editor of the AA Grapevine and has been credited with coining the phrase “I am responsible” at the first AA convention. Source: Igor Sikorsky Jr. AA’s Godparents 1990
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