Apologies to those who don't have the good
fortune to live near Richmond, Indiana (the
gateway to sobriety for the entire mid-western
United States!) but this local document
"History of Alcoholics Anonymous in Richmond,
Indiana, and vicinity" has just today become
available for viewing and/or downloading on
our Area 23 Website.

http://www.area23aa.org/a/view/Main/Richmond

This 50-page PDF Document can be downloaded
with one click! But if you would like to
research a certain page - perhaps your home
town of Greenville, Ohio, or perhaps, Muncie,
Indiana, you can simply go to the appropriate
page and print it up.

Much thanks to Mike H., for making this
process possible!

Bob S.

- - - -

From the moderator:

And also see the articles on early A.A. in
other parts of Indiana collected at "How A.A.
Came to Indiana" at:

http://hindsfoot.org/Nhome.html

This article that Bob S. has just posted is
a detailed fifty-page account of the beginnings
of A.A. in Richmond, Indiana and the surround-
ing parts of Indiana and Ohio. The town of
Richmond is on the state line, roughly halfway
between Indianapolis and Dayton, Ohio.

The story began when Bob B., a paint store owner
in Richmond, got sober by visiting a business
associate in Philadelphia, a man named JIM
BURWELL who had gotten sober in 1938 and had
started A.A. in that city.

Jim's story in the Big Book is called "The
Vicious Cycle" (it is on page 219 in the
current 4th edition).

Jim was the early New York A.A. group's first
"self-proclaimed atheist," the one who insisted
that the phrase "as we understood Him" had to
be added to the reference to God in Steps 3
and 11.

Glenn C. (South Bend, Indiana)