Group History

2020 marks the 80th Anniversary of the Greenwich Village Group, one of the oldest groups of Alcoholics Anonymous. This history, read annually, is based on many sources; a collective memory, passed from one group member to another. Some comes from AA literature, some from the historical archives at the General Service Office, some is hearsay, and some of it is probably just pure lore.

Bill W. had his last drink on December 11, 1934 in New York City. Six months later, while on a business trip to Akron, Ohio, he realized he needed to talk to another drunk —that very night—in order to maintain his sobriety. He was guided to Dr. Bob Smith, who had his last drink on June 10, 1935, the day we celebrate as the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous. Next, the two met AA number three, and he stayed sober. Thus, the first AA Group was started in Akron.

Bill W. returned to New York in the fall of 1935 and began helping drunks by starting the second AA group in Lois W.’s family brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. The family decided to sell the house in 1939 and the group was without a meeting place. After

moving about, briefly to New Jersey, the group settled in Manhattan, meeting in Bert T.'s tailor shop on E. 23rd St. As Bill W. said, “Good old Bert is the guy who hocked his then-failing business to save the book Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939.” Renamed the Manhattan Group, this group continues to meet today at Intergroup’s offices and is New York’s oldest.

The genesis of the Greenwich Village Group is a fluid topic but it occurred in the period following the loss of Bill W. and Lois’s brownstone in Brooklyn. By 1940, there were about 1,400 members of AA worldwide. That fall, various Manhattan Group members, unknown to us now, began to meet occasionally in each other’s apartments because they found the meeting locations inconvenient. These were the earliest members of

what was to become the Greenwich Village Group. Our group celebrates that year, 1940, as its beginning and some say the second AA group in New York City.

In 1943, Abbott T., one of the earliest group members, sent some information to what was then AA’s Central Office. By that time 18 members of the Manhattan Group had begun meeting, still in each other’s apartments, and were calling themselves the Greenwich Village Group. They did not wish to be considered an established group and specifically asked not to be listed in any directory.

In December 1945 Herb M. sent a letter to Central Office acknowledging the official establishment of the Greenwich Village Group. The membership was now 30, and the group wished to be listed in the AA world directory. Subsequent information sheets show the group met at 243 Thompson Street, which is the Judson Memorial Church, for a Closed meeting every Friday night at 8:30, preceded by an Introductory meeting at 7:30.

Even though the Thompson Street address is the only Central Office record for the meeting place in the 1940s, other records indicate the group moved to a second meeting place. One group member with over 50 years of sobriety remembered going to Sullivan Street. And in the Big Book story “Fear of Fear” a woman describes getting sober “…down in the Greenwich Village Group at the old meeting place on Sullivan Street.” The Sullivan Street meeting location, a few blocks from Judson Memorial Church, used to sit squarely between Jimmie Kelly’s Bar and a funeral home. The choice was clear: drink, take your seat in AA, or that’s your funeral.

According to the oral history of Harold U., stored in the AA archives, by 1946 the Greenwich Village Group was known as the ‘‘integrated group” because it was the only group in Manhattan that included both white and black members among its ranks—this was because Ted W. and John H., the first black alcoholics to join AA in New York, attended its meetings. In 1947, Ted, John, and several others from the Greenwich

Village Group banded together to help start the first meeting in Harlem, the St. Nicholas Group, which still meets today.

In April of 1953, a group member sent a letter to Central Office saying that the majority in the group seemed to feel it was a “dandy idea” for the Big Book to be published in a “pocket-type edition”, and would “love to see it come to pass that so we could go on 12th Step calls with a copy in hand and be able to afford to leave it where it might do some good…” This proposal came to the floor that year at the third General Service Conference, and was referred to the Literature Committee. Bill W. cautioned that we might not be able to afford to have a cheaper edition of the Big Book in circulation, given that Big Book sales provided vital financial support for AA services, as they still do today. It wasn’t until 33 years later that in 1986, a paperback edition of the Big Book, 3d Edition, was published.

In 1956 the Greenwich Village Group was listed as meeting at the Cinema Club on Sixth Avenue, the exact address not known to us today. That year the group was influential in the founding of yet another meeting when a collection of artists, writers and poets concluded that GVG was “too stuffy.” They started the Workshop Group, now known as the Perry Street Workshop. In the words of Barry L., the group historian at the time, “they floundered for a while, all got drunk, and then sobered up so that finally the group became a real AA group.”

The Greenwich Village Group has been meeting on the grounds of St. Luke in the Fields since 1959 when they were listed as having “60 active members and 50 non participating members.” Following the move, The Greenwich Village Group became known colloquially as Saint Luke’s. According to the 1959 Intergroup Association of Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlet “AA Meetings in the Metropolitan Area,” GVG held an open meeting at 8:30 on Monday nights and a closed meeting at 8:30 on Wednesday nights in Saint Luke’s Hall. This schedule soon evolved to be a Monday night Open meeting at 8:30; a Wednesday night Newcomer meeting at 7:30; and a Friday night Closed Step and Tradition meeting at 8:30. They met the in the dining room of the

former annex to the church. At some point, they began meeting in the St. Luke’s School basement auditorium. In 1981, the church was ravaged by fire, yet the group never missed a meeting. Since then, the schedule of meetings has been more or less consistent on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. About 15 years ago, a Tuesday night Big Book meeting and this year, a Thursday night Living Sober zoom meeting were added to the schedule.

In the early days of AA, Dr. Bob S. assured a “homosexual” in Akron that he was welcomed to join the group as “the only requirement for membership was a desire to stop drinking.” Marty M., a lesbian, was an early New York group member and got sober in Bill W.’s brownstone in Brooklyn. Her story, “Women Suffer Too,” is in the Big Book in Part 1, “Pioneers of A.A.” Marty M. attended Greenwich Village Group meetings, was one of the founders of the AA Grapevine and went on to found the National Council on Alcoholism. In 1957, two New York meetings, Red Door and Saturday Night Follies, declared themselves as gay groups but were not listed as such. In 1974, the General Service Conference finally voted to allow gay special interest meetings to be listed in the World Directory.

Although the Greenwich Village Group is not a special interest group, there is a long history of inclusion of LGBTQ members. When the General Service Office wanted to prepare a brochure about Gay and Lesbian alcoholics in the mid-seventies, our group member Barry L. brought representatives to GVG to see how the group interacted. The result was the 1976 AA pamphlet written by Barry L., “Do You Think You’re Different?,” which included the stories of group members. During this time, a group member remembers the composition of the group as more men than women, more straight than gay, but there was no controversy around gay members. The group was rougher in those days and rowdy drunks were often thrown out. The group embodied “Park Avenue to park bench” — all were welcome. Besides lesbians and gay men, there were many trans people in the meetings who held service positions, including one trans woman who was Group Chair. Her Secretary was a straight man, a very blue collar

union guy named John McC. Their banter at business meetings was memorable, according to a group member at the time.

In 1975, with over 1,000,000 AA members worldwide, AA published the book Living Sober, the manuscript having been compiled from many AA’s stories by Greenwich Village Group member Barry L. Another group member, Mary P. served as a Trustee of the General Service Board. And three group members, Lois F., Helen T. and Eileen G. worked for many years in staff positions at AA’s General Service Office and to this day, Eileen G. continues to freelance there.

Over the years, members of the Greenwich Village Group have participated in the formation of other groups in the Village in addition to Perry Street. Amongst these is the group Living Now, started in 1977 with the help of a group member who was running a program called Lady Carpenter to assist women coming out of prison. She set up several workshops to help women get a job in the building trades in a city-owned building on St. Mark’s Place. Living Now was born in that space when it turned out that many of the women being helped by Lady Carpenter had a drinking problem.

In the mid ‘80s, a group of Soviet health professionals came to New York to speak with the National Council on Alcoholism. They were also curious about AA and called the General Service Office for information. Members of our group suggested they attend an Open AA meeting at the Greenwich Village Group. However, the only night they could attend due to their travel schedule was a Friday, which is a Step & Tradition meeting— ordinarily closed to non-alcoholics. The group held a special business meeting to discuss whether an exception could be made for these professionals. A heated debate followed, and the room was quite divided; but in the end the group conscience voted in favor. The group wanted them to know that AA can help suffering alcoholics. The Soviets arrived with earphone translators, looking very austere and stony-faced. But after the meeting they were all smiles, extending handshakes and even a few hugs. Several years later, at the opening ceremony for the 1990 International AA Convention, there were two recovering Russian alcoholics in attendance for the first time. They

marched into the stadium with their flag, joining other such groups from countries around the world. And so it was that the Greenwich Village Group played a small but significant role in bringing the AA message to the Russian Federation.

In the early 1980s, the HIV/AIDS pandemic began to claim the lives of many group members, placing unthinkable burdens on survivors and caregivers, while still demonstrating the strength and dignity of the Greenwich Village Group. “We knew what was happening, but we knew very little,” according to a group member. Group member Barry L. was diagnosed with the new disease. In the group, members recall feeling fear of contracting the disease but a member said, “AIDS never came up at a business meeting… without hesitancy, people joined hands at the end of the meeting to say the serenity prayer. We never stopped doing anything.” Group members showed courage and believed the ultimate indignity would be to withhold support or compassion for others. Somehow, these early AIDS patients knew that while AA had saved them, they would go through this journey with a renewed commitment to die sober. And they leaned on the group for support and the group gave it unconditionally. Barry L. died in 1985 and Bill W.’s wife Lois, at 94 years old, came to the basement at Saint Luke’s in a wheelchair to attend Barry’s memorial to honor her old friend. So much courage and strength was shown when there was little hope—until the new medications came and then there was hope. By the late 1990s, the deaths had slowed down and despite all the grief and loss, the group headed into the new millennium larger than ever.

In 2001 one of our group’s longstanding members, Phil P., had his story, “He Lived Only to Drink,” added to the fourth edition of the Big Book. The group continued its history of contributing to AA literature.

Following the September 11th, 2001 attack on the city, the St. Luke’s campus was closed. On Wednesday night, group members who could get downtown, gathered outside St. Luke’s locked gates. Unless one had proof of residency, people were prevented from crossing south of 14th Street. An apartment on Horatio Street was offered as a meeting place but the group was was too large so a decision was made to

meet in a public park at Washington and Horatio. The group sat in stunned silence listening to a qualification and shared about staying sober surrounded by tragedy. Group members recall from where we met, they could see the fire continuing at the World Trade Center. When we asked if there were any visitors, a couple from Florida raised their hands. Somehow they had found our meeting. Prayer vigils had formed around the city and passersby joined our circle not realizing it was AA but stayed because everyone felt such a strong need to be in spiritual community.

During renovations to the Saint Luke’s campus, the Greenwich Village Group had temporary homes at The Archives Building, Saint Veronica’s and The LGBTQ Center. During this period, the group followed direction from GSO regarding group names. Instead of St. Luke’s, members began to refer to the group as GVG. On the completion of renovations, the Greenwich Village Group returned to the Saint Luke’s campus to continue GVG’s long history of recovery, unity and service.

2020 has been a year of many challenges. When New York State was locked down due to the outbreak of COVID-19 disease, the group sprang into action by calling an emergency business meeting to discuss moving all group meetings to the zoom platform. The group’s trusted leaders and the group conscience worked quickly to develop the new format and the Friday Step and Tradition Meeting on March 19th kicked off the zoom era. Meetings continued on schedule, service positions were fulfilled and the A.A. message was carried forward.

At the virtual celebration of the 80th Anniversary of the Greenwich Village Group, the words spoken by Phyllis H. of the General Service Office in 2014 seem prophetic given our current state. She said, “AA has always been evolving; it is always in a state of becoming. Hopefully AA shall never become rigidly dogmatic, but shall always be imbued with love and tolerance, so as to ensure everyone is included.”