Bill W. - Legacy

Legacy

Alcoholics Anonymous has over a hundred thousand registered local groups and over two million active members worldwide.

Wilson has often been described as having loved being the center of attention, but after the AA principle of anonymity had become established, he refused an honorary degree from Yale University and refused to allow his picture, even from the back, on the cover of Time. Wilson's persistence, his ability to take and use good ideas, and his entrepreneurial flair are revealed in his pioneering escape from an alcoholic "death sentence," his central role in the development of a program of spiritual growth, and his leadership in creating and building AA, "an independent, entrepreneurial, maddeningly democratic, non-profit organization."

Wilson is perhaps best known as a synthesizer of ideas, the man who pulled together various threads of psychology, theology, and democracy into a workable and life-saving system. Aldous Huxley called him "the greatest social architect of our century," and Time magazine named Wilson to their Time 100 List of The Most Important People of the 20th Century. Wilson's self-description was a man who, "because of his bitter experience, discovered, slowly and through a conversion experience, a system of behavior and a series of actions that work for alcoholics who want to stop drinking."

Biographer Susan Cheever wrote in My Name Is Bill, "Bill Wilson never held himself up as a model: he only hoped to help other people by sharing his own experience, strength and hope. He insisted again and again that he was just an ordinary man".

Wilson bought a house that he and Lois called Stepping Stones on an 8 acres (3.2 ha) estate in Bedford Hills, New York, in 1941, and he lived there with Lois until he died in 1971. After Lois died in 1988, the house was opened for tours and is now on the National Register of Historic Places; it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2012.