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Marty Mann |
Bill Wilson Speaks about Marty Mann
We are again citizens of the world.... As individuals,
we have a responsibility, maybe a double responsibility. It may be that we have
a date with destiny.
An example: Not long ago Dr. E. M. Jellinek, of Yale University, came to us. He
said, "Yale, as you know, is sponsoring a program of public education on
alcoholism, entirely non-controversial in character.
So, when the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism [now theNational
Council on Alcoholism] was formed, an AA member was made its executive director:
Marty M., one of our oldest and finest. As a member of AA, she is just as much
interested in us as before - AA is still her avocation. But as an officer of the
Yale-sponsored National Committee, she is also interested in educating the
general public on alcoholism. Her AA training has wonderfully fitted her for
this post in a different field. Public education on alcoholism is to be her
vocation.
Could an AA do such a job? At first, Marty herself wondered. She asked her AA
friends, "Will I be regarded as a professional?" Her friends replied: "Had you
come to us, Marty, proposing to be a therapist, to sell straight AA to
alcoholics at so much a customer, we should certainly have branded that as
professionalism. So would everybody else.
"But the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism is quite anothermatter.
You will be taking your natural abilities and AA experience into a very
different field. We don't see how that can affect your amateur status with us.
Suppose you were to become a social worker, a personnel officer, the manager of
a state farm for alcoholics, or even a minister of the gospel?
Who could possibly say those activities would make you a professional AA?
No one, of course."
They went on: "Yet we do hope that AA as a whole will never deviate from its
sole purpose of helping other alcoholics. As an organization, we should express
no opinions save on the recovery of problem drinkers. That very sound national
policy has kept us out of much useless trouble already, and will surely
forestall untold complications in the future.
"Though AA as a whole," they continued, "should have one objective, we believe
just as strongly that for the individual there should be no limitations
whatever, except his own conscience. He should have the complete right to choose
his own opinions and outside activities. If these are good, AA's everywhere will
approve. Just so, Marty, do we think it will be in your case. While Yale is your
actual sponsor, we feel sure that you are going to have the warm personal
support of thousands of AA's wherever you go. We shall all be thinking how much
better a break this new generation of potential alcoholic kids will have because
of your work, how much it might have meant to us had our own mothers and fathers
really understood alcoholism."
Personally, I feel that Marty's friends have advised her wisely; that they have
clearly distinguished between the limited scope of AA as a whole and the broad
horizon.
THE GRAPEVINEŠ, October 1944
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