Commentary on history leading up to Baby Blue Case

by Bo S.

In the early 1970's, Greg Pierce continued a process begun in the late 1960's and leading to the popular movement in Narcotics Anonymous. He began recovery in 1970 and from the beginning was in meetings with all the California old timers. To our knowledge, there were twenty meetings in the world at that time and all of them were in Southern California. He went to them all in time. It bothered him to find that there was no real organization in NA, spiritual or otherwise. A viewpoint that NA ought to have a central office was unified and an Office was begun. It was located downstairs in the home of Bob B. It was later moved to rented space with CEDA workers. Some files were lost and the Office was moved to Jimmy K’s home in Sun Valley, across from a public airport. The Office - and telephone - was located in Jimmy’s home all through the seventies. As the Fellowship grew, the organization and files at the Office expanded. Jimmy was spectacular about supporting the addicts calling in for help. Unfortunately, he was older and had suffered from illness (cancer, how about tuberculosis?). With a Scotch background, he affected extreme control over the office, he had never read the Peter Principle by Dr. Lawrence Peter. For instance requiring a volunteer executive secretary to use a key to unlock a cabinet to get a single first class stamp. This made him seem like a cranky gentleman doing a tough job and being responsible. What also resulted is blind spots like getting a Federal non-profit tax number and giving it out to members over the telephone all around the country. When Bob Stone was installed as WSO Manager in 1982, the found stacks of correspondence topped off with undeposited checks. He listed them and put them in the WSO account the next day. Nevertheless, Jimmy K is recognized as our founder. Through study, it is possible to go back further than 1953 and consider Daniel Carlson, Houston Sewell and others like Bgr. General Dorothy Berry and Father Dan Egan. What is important about Jimmy was his helping us get our White Booklet in the 1950's and manning WSO during the 1970's. He was the one to answer the phone and spend countless hours 12 Stepping the young Fellowship. From the mid-1970's onward, WSO sent out starter packs to all new groups on request. These contained a copy of the NA Tree, the White Booklet and groups supplies including a Treasurer’s Handbook and a registration form. A growing World Directory of Meetings was available for a low cost. No one ever helped so many people over the telephone as did Jimmy K in the 1970's. He also played a unifying role because of the centrality of his position at WSO and possibly out of the education and viewpoint developed over the years with all those late nights with members in his kitchen and all those phone calls. Back East from 1975 onward, many of us would follow up on this friendly, caring approach and announce new meetings and groups to their nearest fellow members who would go out of their way to visit. We distributed literature, mailed out the original chip system based on the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and day glow for a year. When the World Convention moved out of California to Houston, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia and Wichita, Kansas, NA began to grow terrifically. One example was the Ohio Fellowship. The first year there were four meetings in Ohio. The second year, the number of groups rose to forty. Then eighty groups in the third year. In the fourth year, there were over a hundred and sixty meetings. The Fellowship was very open and caring. Recovery and Fellowship were the order of the day and policy was adjusted to support our service efforts. The Service Manual, renamed in 1979 from the NA Tree, became the subject of close scrutiny and endless study. While short and simple to begin with, amendments and motions at the WSC began to change the structure, enlarging and extending the duties and functions of WSO while diminishing and reducing the say of the Fellowship from binding WSC motions made and voted on by Regional Representatives who were expected to vote the conscience of their home Region to Delegates who vote their own conscience and report to their home Regions once they returned home. As Jimmy grew older and the young Fellowship developed its lines of communication, there was an unspoken shift. Many groups had problems with getting their literature orders filled. Groups who resorted to printing their own were considered disloyal. Questions about how NA functioned in its service structure politely avoiding characterizing the service functions in terms of the personality of the current chairperson. While this may have helped stress principles over personalities, it did little to deal with the reality of different levels and patterns of understanding relating to our principles. The service structure contained qualifications including increasing experience with the NA 12 Steps and 12 Traditions. There is, of course, no way to track someone’s spiritual progress but this can be said. Without the capacity to surrender, a person is incapable of really listening to another. Without a belief in a Higher Power and turning our will over to the care of that Power, a person is bound to go it alone, on their own power - and think all others are doing the same. Letting our God help us with a moral inventory, sharing it, becoming willing and asking our Loving God to remove our defects, we carry those defects with us always. Our selfishness and basic fear my be arrested to some extent but when it really comes down to it, we have all our defects intact, ready to go. Continuing this line of thinking, making a list and becoming willing to make amends to all those we have harmed, proves our sincerity and our freedom from fear. It actualizes much of what has been happening inside as we worked the first six Steps. Making the amends punches a hole in the fear that has ruled us ever since active addiction began taking us down. Steps Eight and Nine allow us to step free of the personal fears and restrictions we have developed as addicts in a way that also makes it good for us as trusted servants. When we are wrong, we can promptly admit it. We can seek through prayer and meditation that which is hidden from those who cannot yet live a life based in spiritual principle. The spiritual awakening we experience and the ability to live by spiritual principles makes us extraordinarily able to serve and do the Will of a Loving God in this life. Consider, if you will, how these very factors might play out over the lives of a hundred thousand people. Now, double it. The effect of all these people who have entered recovery but not yet progressed to the point where they could honestly say they had a good working knowledge of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions explains what happened to our service structure. Unable to fully implement the approved, written structure, service, especially service at the world level, became a zoo full of people who occupied themselves trying to re-write their guidelines because they had no basis for surrender and building on the accomplishments of those who had gone before. They had no traditions of respecting the abilities of others and in the end fell back on the growing lattice work of corporate structure making itself appear as the ‘real deal’ in NA. Of course, the entirety of NA world services has never gotten a single addict clean. They, like all of us, can only assist with group needs and do things under the direction of the Fellowship. The Fellowship mans the meetings. The Fellowship lives the program and greets the newcomer. The Fellowship has been growing. Any other viewpoint is like saying the dance got us clean or we got clean as a result of a convention or a PI committee. No, it is that fact that we encountered someone who cared and that early hope grew into our recovery. This is not to belittle the remarkable and important job done for us by our world service contingent. It is just to set the record straight. We, as a Fellowship, need to always be clear about our dependence on a Loving God to care for us and do those things that are beyond our strength or ability. Into this tableau, bring a few bright new comers who have past experience with money, power and prestige. As surrendered members of NA, they feel compassion for the confusion and difficulties of self-government experienced by the mixed bag of recovering addicts. Instead of letting it play out, and let some of our unseen talent and God’grace keep the miracles coming, they do the human thing: they take charge. Gently without making waves, they begin to communicate and agree among themselves the insanity of the group conscience process. Being mentally based - and that is all a person without a secure Higher Power can be - they rationalize things around until they are the hope of NA. Over a few years, they and their friends are in place and the Grateful Dave, Baby Blue Case takes over front stage center. The lawsuit in 1990-1992 quickly lets world service understand that it is not in charge and in fact of a court of law, they are admonished to make concessions to the forces that oppose them and their corporate solutions to all our problems. This is in 1990! The Baby Blue is demonized into a metaphor for all that World Service fears. Cease and Desist orders are sent out to a long list of members, many of whom have no idea what is happening. When you hear about people leaving the Fellowship because of service disorders, imagine getting the following notice in the mail seemingly from your beloved Fellowship.