May 30, 2025
“This issue of the Grapevine marks the anniversary of its founding exactly fifteen [now seventy] years ago.
The memory of some of those first editorial meetings will linger with me always. Seated around a table in a tiny cheerless room some place downtown, the founders pored over their freshly written copy for the first issues. In those days the enthusiastic founders did everything. Not only did they do the art work, write the bulk of the stories, they kept the books, they paid the printing bill, they typed the address on each copy and finally licked all the stamps. So went the happy monthly paroxysm of creating what was to become the principal monthly journal of our whole society.
Today 35,000 readers [now over 100,000 across multiple media platforms] see mirrored in each issue of the AA Grapevine a monthly vision of the worldwide thought, feeling and activity of our whole fellowship. It is our great means of inter-communication; a magic carpet on which each of you can ride to the more distant reaches and watch new brothers and sisters emerge from darkness into light.
On this happy occasion I send my warmest affection to Grapevine readers and staff alike. May God prosper the Grapevine always.”
AA Co-Founder, Bill W., June 1959, “An Anniversary Letter”, The Language of the Heart
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