Our History

AA started in Lincoln in 1944 when…

… a member of a very prominent family in Lincoln – who had a drinking problem – discovered AA on a trip to New York City. He brought that experience and the book Alcoholics Anonymous back home and started a meeting in Lincoln. Gradually, the fellowship grew in the city and across the state of Nebraska.

By the 1980s, meetings were being held in churches and other facilities all across the city, including in at tiny stone church on the southwest corner of 31st and P Streets. (That building is now “Unity Lincoln.”) The church hosted up to 18 meetings a week and the AA Central Office where the fellowship sold AA and Al-Anon literature.

But in 1984, the leaders of the church told the groups and Central Office that they all had to move. No reason was given to most of the members. The Central Office moved to a building owned by Hyland Brothers Lumber Company at 35th and Apple Streets. The groups went through a series of other facilities, first at 31st and O and then at 27th and O.. It turned out that the groups had been paying in their rent money to a treasurer who was not honest and had pocketed the money instead of paying the facilities.

Another facility was found in Dec. 1988 behind a water bed store at 301 P Street, west of the O Street Viaduct. For the first time, the cooperating meetings had a Steering Committee that made sure the rents were paid, and they had enough space to even hold dances. The meetings stayed there for four years. But the rent was $1,600 a month and it kept going up as the owner got complaints from other tenants about smoking around the building and a crowded parking lot.

So, by 1990, the cooperating groups were looking for another facility. It was a frustrating process. Nothing seemed to fit the needs of the groups. Just as there were about to give up, one member of the Steering Committee, Clair M. was driving to work when he saw a “For Sale” sign in front of the old church at 28th and S Streets. He talked with the realtor for the congregation, and came to selling price of around $80,000 for the building. The church had originally been build in 1907 by Second Baptist Church of Lincoln. That evening, Clair was telling his wife, Bee Jay, about the possibility, and she realized that this might well be a “God Moment,” that is, God doing for us what we can’t do for ourselves. As a little girl, she had attended the Second Baptist Church and had been baptized there.

The cooperating groups voted unanimously to find a way to move into the old church. There were several hurdles to overcome –

• First, the cooperating groups would have to organize themselves into a non-profit corporation, get recognition from the state and get a 501(c)3 tax exemption from the IRS. The legal work started with the help of attorneys Bill B. and Doogie D.

• The new non-profit corporation would have to get zoning approval from the City to hold 12-Step meetings there. It turned out the only way to accomplish that was to put the building on Nebraska’s Register of Historic Places. Two committees, the city council and the mayor all approved the application.

• The corporation would have to find a bank willing to loan 80 percent of the purchase price and come up with $17,400 in cash plus $15,000 for the needed repairs to the building.

FirsTier Bank agreed to finance the purchase. The new Board of Directors for The Meeting Place, Inc. put together a plan to offer promissory notes to individuals within the recovery community with a 7 percent simple interest return for any amount between $250 to $5,000. To keep within the Traditions of AA, the non-profit corporation and its Board of Directors were separate from AA, although the bylaws spelled out that a majority of board members had to be AA members with long-term sobriety.

Then the members of the board went to AA and Al-Anon meetings all over Lincoln invited people to invest in The Meeting Place. By the end of the summer of 1990, a total of $32,750 had been pledged to the corporation. Within five years, the corporation was in a position to pay off the loans, by several individuals ended up donating a total of $12,000 of the $36.750 owed.

All of the cooperating meetings moved to the 28th and S by mid-October 1990.

In the meantime, the Central Office was losing its building at 35th and Apple. In fact, the entire building was being gong to be demolished around September 30th, 1990. So Clair went to the Central Office Board and proposed a $250 a month rent at the new Meeting Place. The two boards agreed.

The only problem was, the Central Office needed to be in its space before The Meeting Place actually owned the building. But the church allowed a basement space to be remodeled before ownership changed hands and the Central Office moved October 1st.

By the end October, 22 groups were meeting each week in the building – and, by the way, the church congregation was still holding Sunday services until December when their new building was ready.

Of course, the roof still leaked and winter was coming.

A “fix the roof” project was organized and up to 50 volunteers starting tearing off 95 years of failing roofing material. At one point, a van-load of prisoners on work release helped out. Eventually, 85 sheets of plywood were installed to cover the bad spots and new roofing material was laid down.

In the three decades since it opened the Meeting Place has grown to the point that we now host around 40 different groups sponsoring around 60 meetings every week. We have served a wide variety of 12-Step groups including AA, Spanish language AA, Al-Anon, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Co-Dependents Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, Recovering Couples, and Dual Diagnosis groups.

Several renovation projects have been completed, many with volunteer help, but more often paid for out of rental income from the individual 12-Step meetings.