Edith M & Joe M at 4th International AA Convention at Toronto, Canada 7/15/1965

Joe had been to Bellevue’s alcoholic ward thirty-five times. He thought that should qualify him for A.A. because “they don’t take you in the Bellevue alcoholic ward for sinus trouble.”

His first trip to Bellevue was at the age of seventeen, and he was called an alcoholic at eighteen or nineteen. He was in jail perhaps sixty-five or seventy-five times.