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June 4:
2002- Caroline Knapp, author of “Drinking: A Love Story” died sober
of lung cancer.

June 5:
1940 – Ebby Thatcher took a job at the NY Worlds Fair.

June 6:
1940 – The first AA Group in Richmond, VA, was formed.
1979 – AA gave the two-millionth copy of the Big Book to Joseph
Califano, then Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. It was
presented by Lois Wilson, Bill’s wife, in New York.

June 7:
1939 – Bill and Lois Wilson had an argument, the first of two times
Bill almost slipped.
1941 – The first AA Group in St. Paul, Minnesota, was formed.

June 8:
1941 – Three AA’s started a group in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

June 10:
1935 – The date that is celebrated as Dr. Bob’s last drink and the
official founding date of AA. There is some evidence that the
founders, in trying to reconstruct the history, got the date wrong
and it was actually June 17.

June 11:

1945 – Twenty-five hundred attend AA’s 10th Anniversary in Cleveland,
Ohio.
1969 – Dr. Bob’s granddaughter, Bonna, daughter of Sue Smith and
Ernie Galbraith (The Seven Month Slip in the First Edition) killed
herself after first killing her six-year-old child.
1971 – Ernie Galbraith died.

June 15:
1940 – First AA Group in Baltimore, MD, was formed.

June 16:
1938 – Jim Burwell, “The Vicious Cycle” in Big Book, had his last
drink.

June 17:
1942 – New York AA groups sponsored the first annual NY area
meeting. Four hundred and twenty-four heard Dr. Silkworth and AA
speakers.

June 18:
1940 – One hundred attended the first meeting in the first AA
clubhouse at 334-1/2 West 24th St., New York City.

June 19:
1942 – Columnist Earl Wilson reported that NYC Police Chief Valentine
sent six policemen to AA and they sobered up. “There are fewer
suicides in my files,” he commented.

June 21:
1944 – The first Issue of the AA Grapevine was published.

June 24:
1938 – Two Rockefeller associates told the press about the Big
Book “Not to bear any author’s name but to be by ‘Alcoholics
Anonymous.'”

June 25:
1939 – The New York Times reviewer wrote that the Big Book is “more
soundly based psychologically than any other treatment I have ever
come upon.”

June 26:
1935 – Bill Dotson. (AA #3) entered Akron’s City Hospital for his
last detox and his first day of sobriety.

June 28:
1935 – Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson visited Bill Dotson at Akron’s City
Hospital.

June 30:
1941 – Ruth Hock showed Bill Wilson the Serenity Prayer and it was
adopted readily by AA.
2000 – More than 47,000 from 87 countries attended the opening
meeting of the 65th AA Anniversary in Minneapolis, MN.

Other significant events in June for which we have no specific date:

1948 – A subscription to the AA Grapevine was donated to the Beloit,
Wisconsin, Public Library by a local AA member.
1981 – AA in Switzerland held its 25th Anniversary Convention with
Lois Wilson and Nell Wing in attendance.

For those not familiar with the publication, 24 Newsletter is produced by the folks on East Ridge, an intentional community founded by AA old-timer and editor of the 12×12 Tom Powers.

Here’s a bit to whet your appetite:

“Many recoveries are never interrupted. They just proceed on and on to deeper degrees of sanity and reach a point of real spiritual awakening. It is possible, however, to take this Program and twist it. There are a few of us who do not value what is coming to us, who do not see the nature of this gift even if it is in our laps. I took my early growth in AA as an indication that I was really a pretty smart guy. I got all renewed in the smart-guy department and I began to take the parts of the Program I liked and leave out the parts I didn’t like. And this progressed to the point where the part of the Program that I didn’t like was the sobriety part.”
(Tom Powers, describing his relapse in Sanity—the Heart of the Program)