EASY DOES IT, A HISTORY

Today Easy Does It, along with One Day at a Time, First Things First, Live and Let Live and Think, Think, Think adorns the walls of AA meeting rooms and clubs around the globe. Few realize however, these concepts entered AA’s collective consciousness courtesy of Emmet Fox. The early members of what would become Alcoholics Anonymous* residing in New York attended Dr. Fox’s gatherings on Wednesday evenings. Emmet Fox held his Wednesday meetings and Saturday services in the largest enclosed public venues available in 1930’s New York, the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, Steinway Hall even Madison Square Garden as attendance grew. This continued up to the start of World War II when large gatherings were suspended out of security concerns. The early AA members** who did not live in New York studied 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 in the 1930‘s. It is in these pamphlets that the mottoes later adopted by AA are found. Additionally in early pamphlets published by the first recognized AA group, King’s School in Akron, Sermon on the Mount is suggested reading.

*Though AA dates its birth from 6/10/35 the first AA meeting (the group broke from the Oxford Group (Moral Rearmament) and stood in singleness of purpose in helping those suffering from alcoholism) 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