Throwback Thursday AA history post - from StoriesOfRecovery.org, a short bio of Fitz Mayo,, author of Big Book story Our Southern Friend:

Fitz Mayo - a.k.a. John Henry Fitzhugh Mayo (1898-1943)

Fitz was one of the AA founding members of AA in New York with Bill Wilson. Bill and Lois visited him and his wife Libby at his house in Cumberstone MD in connection with their attendance (and his) at Oxford Group open houses in 1936. The marriage was in trouble by that time and ended shortly after their meeting. The son of an Episcopalian clergyman, he attended a church school, where he became rebellious at what he thought an overdose of religious education and became an atheist. Fitz was a failed bookkeeper and school teacher due to his drinking. Once his marriage to Libby ended he checked himself into Town's Hospital in NYC. Fitz most likely was the second to get sober in New York, right after Hank Parkhurst. He was the first man after Bill Wilson to get sober in New York and he remained sober for the rest of his life. Once discharged from Towns Hospital Fitz attended meetings at Bill and Lois's house even before it broke from the Oxford Group. During the writing of the Big Book he insisted that the book should express Christian doctrines and use Biblical terms and expressions. The result of the debate resulted in using the phrase "God as we understood him" in the Big Book. Fitz was a childhood friend of Jim Burwell, and was the stimulus that caused Jim to become involved in the group. Fitz developed cancer and died in 1943 with eight years of sobriety. Fitz was instrumental in founding AA groups in the Washington DC area. Fitz story appears as "Our Southern Friend" in the first 3 editions of the Big Book. Fitz is also the person Bill writes about in chapter 4 "We Agnostics" on pages 55 - 57, the man who thought he was an atheist.