The West Baltimore Group of Alcoholics Anonymous

This page is brought to you by the West Baltimore Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. We do recovery the "old fashioned way." This group was started on May 9, 1947 and was one of the first Baltimore Neighborhood Groups in the City. It started in a local man's home. His name was Charlie Chrest and he lived on Mallow Hill Road in what was then Postal Zone 29.

One of the members approached Dr. Tuerk, who was in charge of the state mental institutions and was given permission to bring alcoholic patients to the meetings in Charlie C's home. Due to the fact that Charlie's home was so filled with so many members, a change was needed. A few short months later, the West Baltimore Group established a meeting on the Spring Grove Hospital grounds, thereby starting institutional commitments in Maryland.

Our home-group meeting grew and was moved to Pioneer Hall, a rented room.....atop a bar/liquor store. You had to enter the bar and go up the steps to the second floor. These folks really wanted sobriety! They paid two dollars a month rent, when they had it.

A friend of one of the members, Rev. McGowan attended meeting to see what AA was all about and said "You can't continue meeting above a bar and offered a room at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church at Frederick Road & McCurley St. where we stayed until the church moved to 5700 Edmonson Avenue and took us with it. Then in 1996 when we moved to our present location at Emmanuel Lutheran Church, 929 Ingleside Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21228 and meets on Wednesday evening at 8:00PM.

One of our members then put up a web site offering the history of our group making us the first home group up on the WWW. We then wrote the original sites for the Baltimore Intergroup and the Maryland General Services Office

We celebrated our 50th Anniversary on May 14, 1997. This makes the West Baltimore Group one of the first 360 groups in existence!, We just celebrated our 65th! If you missed it, come and visit us anyhow! You are not only invited, you are expected; we are making extra coffee for you when you show up! Picture of our Fiftieth Anniversary Here is a letter of congratulations from the Baltimore Intergroup Council on our 65th!. Here is a map for the location of our meeting.

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Biographies of the authors of the stories in the first three editions of the Big Book

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Here is a neat way to calculate the time from your last drink!

A review of the new Bill W. Documentary Film

Last update 6/16/2013 @ 12:00 AM

"The Third Legacy, as defined by Bill: `... an A. A. service is anything whatever that helps us to reach a fellow sufferer -- ranging all the way from the Twelfth Step itself to a ten-cent phone call and a cup of coffee, and to A. A.'s General Service Office for national and international action. The sum total of all these services is our Third Legacy of Service." from: Pass It On: (Page 347 )

"A vast communications net now covers the earth, even to our remotest reaches. Granting all its huge public benefits, this limitless world forum is, nevertheless a hunting ground for all those who would seek money, acclaim, and power at the expense of society in general. Here the forces of good and evil are locked in struggle. All that is shoddy and destructive contest all that is best.

Therefore nothing can matter more to the future welfare of AA than the manner in which we use this colossus of communication. Used unselfishly and well, the results can surpass our present imagination. Should we handle this great instrument badly, we shall be shattered by the ego demands of our own people--often with the best of intention on their part. Against all this, the sacrificial spirit of AA's anonymity at the top public level is literally our shield and our buckler.

Here again we must be confident that love of AA, and of God, will always carry the day." - Bill W. in the November 1960 © Grapevine - referring to print media.