Ebby brought the message to AA Co-founder Bill W at 182 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, NY sometime between Armistice Day November 11th and December 12th 1934, the day Bill checked in to Towns Hospital for the last time. In this talk, Ebby tells a very different story of that meeting. Among the numerous differences, he indicates it did not happen around the kitchen table with Bill alone but with Bill and Lois in the upstairs common room after dinner.
He says it really doesn't change anything but he was sober at the time and Bill was not. AA Historians Mel B. and Bill B. (author of My Name is Bill W.) both confirmed that Ebby called Lois the night before. Lois did not confirm or deny Ebby's version in a multi-CD interview with Bill B. but she seems to tell a different story than Ebby in a talk she did in Dallas TX in 1973. Bill B asked Searcy W, the man who helped get Ebby sober in Texas, and Searcy indicated Ebby told a different story more than once.
I have fun researching these little anomalies of AA lore. The important lesson for me to remember is that my story, as I remember it, never happened and is unknowable. I have to distinguish truth from dogma. What truly matters is how I am treating the world today.
(50 min) (11.6 MB) (id#222)
