The LOIS WILSON Story
“Eloquently written with the insight of a journalist close to his source, The Lois Wilson Story is a masterpiece that provides a vivid portrayal of a woman whose sacrifices helped give birth to AA and Al-Anon.”
—ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR., attorney, Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic
“Bill Borchert came into my life during our astounding screen collaboration in My Name Is Bill W. What a joy to revisit this friendship in his new achievement, The Lois Wilson Story. Bill Borchert will always be a seminal part of my life, and now millions of others will get to appreciate his selfless devotion to the woman who cofounded Al-Anon and her mesmerizing story. Bravo, my friend.”
—JAMES WOODS, Emmy Award-winning actor, My Name Is Bill W.
“Bill Borchert shares the intimate recollections of Lois Wilson in an authentic and powerful tale of helplessness, hope, and fulfillment. This view of Lois’s life with Bill Wilson and the birth and nurturing of the Twelve Step movement is awesome and rewarding. It is a page-turning read and a tribute to Lois, cofounder of Al-Anon, and her passion to bring healing to everyone affected by the family disease of alcoholism.”
—JOHNNY ALLEM, president/CEO, Johnson Institute
“This book is a jewel. It tells the story of two people born at the turn of the twentieth century, who, in their tragic struggle with addiction, come to transform the lives of millions across the world. Lois and her story are truly captivating.”
—CLAUDIA BLACK, author, It Will Never Happen to Me
“The story that would complement that of Bill W.’s had yet to be written. And now, William Borchert has done the job. It’s well done. I’ll be reading and utilizing for research the Borchert story for many years.”
—DICK B., writer, historian, retired attorney, and author of twenty-five published titles on the history and spiritual roots of Alcoholics Anonymous
The LOIS WILSON Story
When Love Is Not Enough
William G. Borchert
Hazelden
Center City, Minnesota 55012-0176
1-800-328-0094
1-651-213-4590 (Fax)
www.hazelden.org
©2005 by William G. Borchert
All rights reserved. Published 2005
Printed in the United States of America
No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any manner
without the written permission of the publisher
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Borchert, William G.
The Lois Wilson story: when love is not enough /
William G. Borchert.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
978-1-59285-328-1 (hardcover)
978-1-59285-598-8 (paperback)
1. Lois, 1894–1988. 2. W., Bill. 3. Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc. 4. Alcoholics Anonymous. 5. Alcoholics’ spouses—United States—Biography. 6. Alcoholics—Family
relationships. I. Title.
HV5032.L28B67 2005
362.292'4'092—dc22
[B] 2005046021
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-59285-807-1
Cover design by David Spohn
Interior design by Lightbourne
Typesetting by Lightbourne
Alcoholics Anonymous, The Big Book, and AA are registered trademarks of AA World Services.
To my loving wife, Bernadette,
without whom this book—nor me—would be.
Contents
Author’s Note
Foreword by Robert L. Hoguet
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 When Will It End?
2 How It All Began
3 Love Almost at First Sight
4 War Changes Many Things
5 The Open Road to Success
6 Social Drinking—Unsocial Behavior
7 The Crash
8 When Love Is Not Enough
9 Recovery for Whom?
10 Great Dreams in Akron
11 Nightmare on Clinton Street
12 Facing Her Own Addiction
13 An Unsettled World—An Unsettled Life
14 The Evolution of Al-Anon
15 A Heart Attack Can Be Good for the Soul
16 Bill’s Legacy: Alcoholics Anonymous—Love, Controversy, and Triumph
17 Lois’s Legacy: Al-Anon, Alateen, and the Stepping Stones Foundation
Notes
About the Author
Author’s Note
FOR MORE THAN FOURTEEN YEARS PRIOR TO LOIS WILSON’S passing, my wife and I had the privilege of knowing her as a close and dear friend. I was also honored when Lois gave me permission to write a screenplay based on her and her husband Bill’s life together and the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. Titled My Name Is Bill W., the movie starred James Garner as Dr. Robert Smith, James Woods as Bill Wilson, and JoBeth Williams as Lois.
Before I wrote this film, Lois generously allowed me to tape many of her remembrances of years past and her struggles before, during, and after Bill’s drinking years. I used some of these poignant and intimate recollections to create a true-to-life movie that garnered a number of awards including a Best Actor award for James Woods.
But the film focused to a large extent on the accomplishments of Bill and Dr. Bob and the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, barely addressing Lois’s own personal inner conflicts that led to the founding of Al-Anon. That’s why this book is long overdue.
In accepting Lois’s confidence, I promised her one important thing—that I would always tell the truth of her story. She was comfortable with that, knowing that I would share the warts as well as the beauty marks, the pain as well as the joy, the intimate as well as the obvious.
For Lois, it was always Bill. I remember the Saturday afternoon I sat with her on the back porch of Stepping Stones, their home in Bedford Hills, New York, and read the movie script for her approval. When I finished, she simply smiled and said: “Bill would have loved it.” And I recall the evening we were chatting in her living room about their early days together and she remarked: “I used to think my life really began the day I met Bill. He was handsome and exciting and I just knew he was capable of great things. I guess I was as addicted to him as he was to alcohol. Then he got sober—and I got well.”
But that deep love between them remained. As Lois Wilson lay dying in Mount Kisco Hospital with a breathing tube down her throat so that she couldn’t speak, I was told she scribbled a note to her nurse, “I want to see my Bill.” A family member gave permission for the tube to be removed. Lois was able to breathe on her own long enough to say goodbye to the friends and loved ones gathered at her bedside. She died later that day at the age of ninety-seven.
In writing this biography, I hope that many of the poignant and intimate remembrances Lois shared with me will help the reader come to know the lady I knew and to understand the enduring gifts she left us and the entire world. For Lois Wilson was also capable of great things. Perhaps that’s why her greatest dream was that some day the whole world would live by the Twelve Steps of AA and Al-Anon and there would be true peace upon the earth.
Indeed, the famous writer Aldous Huxley once said that when the history of the twentieth century is finally written, the greatest achievements America will be known for is giving the world Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon.
Fore
word
ALCOHOLICS DAMAGE OTHERS AS WELL AS THEMSELVES. On average they dramatically affect at least four other people, usually close family members, who are caught up in the vortex created by the alcoholic’s destructive behavior. Spouses, parents, children, and even co-workers can find their lives being taken over by an alcoholic; they begin to lose control of their own actions.
The story of Bill Wilson, Lois’s husband of fifty-three years and the co-founder of AA, is well known. However, in spite of the importance of Lois Wilson’s contribution in bringing relief to the multitudes affected by alcoholics, little has been written about her. Bill Borchert’s The Lois Wilson Story, the first comprehensive biography of Lois Wilson, fills this void.
The author of My Name Is Bill W., the acclaimed and Emmy Award-winning 1989 film biography of Bill Wilson, Bill Borchert was a frequent visitor in Lois’s home during the last fourteen years of her life. He is one of the few left who knew her well. His personal experiences of her are buttressed by almost eight hours of exclusive interviews with Lois in addition to materials from numerous other sources, including the Stepping Stones Foundation Archives.
The result is a book that tells it all. The Lois Wilson Story describes in compelling detail Lois’s comfortable beginnings, her attraction to a clever and persistent young man, her years of despair as drinking claimed an ever-increasing part of Bill, her joy when he sobered up, and her frustration as AA came to dominate Bill’s life.
Charmed by Bill’s vibrant personality and promise in their early life together, Lois spent years making excuses for him and covering up his behavior when he was drinking. She never stopped loving him and believing in him even as his disease progressed, but she felt shame, anger, humiliation, anxiety, and fear as his actions became increasingly unreliable and boorish. She shared Bill’s elation along with his sense of discovery and mission when he sobered up, only to find herself irritated with Bill over his subsequent preoccupation with AA and lack of attention to her.
The climactic moment of this roller-coaster ride came one evening in 1937 when she threw a shoe at him for abruptly putting her off in order to hurry away to a meeting with other recovering alcoholics. With her action came an epiphany—the realization that she, too, needed to change. Her next inspiration was to seek out and talk to the wives of other alcoholics. Their honest and intimate sharing of experiences led to the discovery that she was not alone in her plight. Al-Anon was born from that common understanding, from the realization that continuing to share their “experience, strength, and hope” could help family members and others affected by an alcoholic to recover, just as sharing common experiences can help alcoholics recover in AA. For over fifty years now, Al-Anon has provided hope and help to millions of those close to alcoholics.
Lois Wilson, who survived Bill by seventeen years, continued to work until the end of her life to reduce the stigma of alcoholism and to raise public awareness of its effects on family and society. In 1979 she created the Stepping Stones Foundation to preserve and welcome visitors to Stepping Stones, the home in Westchester County, New York, that she and Bill moved into in 1941, and to carry on her work. The Foundation’s purpose remains to share the story of hope for recovery from alcoholism.
The Lois Wilson Story offers something for anyone interested in or affected by alcoholism. For the general reader, it offers insight into the impact the alcoholic can have on the lives and health of those near to him or her. For those who may be close to an alcoholic, whether active or in recovery, it offers an intimate story with which they may identify. And for those in Al-Anon, the program that offers hope and help to the families and friends of alcoholics, it offers a detailed history of Lois’s struggle and the birth of Al-Anon—a history that may enhance their experience of recovery.
ROBERT L. HOGUET
President, Stepping Stones Foundation
Preface
IT’S THE FIRST SATURDAY OF JUNE, 1983. THE THIRTIETH ANNUAL Al-Anon Family Picnic at Stepping Stones, the home of Lois Burnham Wilson in Bedford Hills, New York, is coming to an end. The large crowd in attendance is beginning to pack up for the long journeys back to homes throughout the Northeast, and for some, as far away as Texas, California, Hawaii, Alaska, and London, England.
Dads lift their sleepy children lovingly into their arms while their wives close picnic baskets and gather blankets from the sprawling green lawn that slopes gently from the old brown-shingled house on the hill above.
Most people have spent the morning and early afternoon touring the grounds and visiting or revisiting the house that, as many comment, is almost a historical museum. Lois has filled it with pictures and memorabilia of the programs she and her late husband, Bill, started—programs that are still flourishing around the world, helping millions to find a wonderful new way of life.
On the upstairs walls in particular hang photos and keepsakes of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon members and supporters. The most sought out photos are those of Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, the two men who started AA in 1935. Others want to see pictures of Dr. Bob’s wife, Annie Smith, who Lois called one of her dearest friends and greatest inspirations, and, of course, Anne Bingham, who helped Lois organize Al-Anon in 1951. Anne Bingham, Annie Smith, Dr. Bob, and Bill have long since passed on.
The visitors gaze in awe and talk in hushed tones of respect for those who built the pathway along which they now walk to sobriety. The scene resembles a Hall of Fame, in a way, except these fading photos of men and women have nothing to do with a mere game of sport. Here are people who truly won at the challenging game of life.
It’s now time to go back outside, where Lois introduces the AA, Al-Anon, and Alateen speakers for the day.
The recovered alcoholic speaker describes himself as a successful advertising executive in his early forties. His bouts with booze had led to loss of family, friends, good jobs, and good health, but after a stint on park benches, several rehabs, and nine years of sobriety in AA, his gains now far exceed his losses.
His wife, the Al-Anon speaker, attests to all the pain, despair, and humiliation. Only today, their three children sit before her on the lawn trying to hold back tears as they smile at a mother who now yells far less and loves them so much more.
The Alateen speaker is a very nervous and very attractive high school sophomore with long red hair and braces. Her mother is still drinking alcoholically, but she and her father are coping better through their programs . . . for now anyway.
The talks are moving to say the least. They are honest reflections of lives shared to help others identify and recover from the very same illness.
The speakers are finished, and it’s time to pull up stakes. One senses a touch of sadness mixed in with the warm good-bye hugs and kisses among the hundreds of men, women, and children here for the day. It seems most don’t really want to leave.
These visitors to Stepping Stones come from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all nationalities. They are young and old, healthy and ailing, well off and not so well off. And they talk openly and willingly about their experiences and about alcoholism as a family disease that can touch anyone—butcher, baker; lawyer, policeman; hairdresser, housewife; rich man, poor man; pilot, priest. But now they are sober in AA, recovered in Al-Anon and Alateen, and each one seems to emanate an indescribable sense of joy. And even on close inspection, that joy is not feigned. It is very real.
A few begin to straggle off toward their cars parked in the nearby field. Most line the porch of Lois’s home to bid farewell to a woman they worship, a woman more than a few feel may not be here next year. For Lois Wilson is now ninety-two and quite frail. She walks with a cane and was forced to give up her driver’s license last year. Still, she doesn’t seem to have lost one iota of her mental alertness and wit, which she uses mainly to poke fun at herself.
Yes, worship is a very strong word. I know. Yet, as I stand here next to
the old stone fireplace in her living room on this uplifting June afternoon, I am actually witnessing it for myself.
I first met Lois several years ago. By then my wife, Bernadette, had come to know her quite well. We visited often and Lois spent a number of Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays at our home, where she enjoyed our nine children and they thoroughly enjoyed her. In fact, one Thanksgiving holiday, our kids gave her a beautiful, purring, white-and-rust-colored kitten. Lois loved her and promptly named her Borchey in their honor.
I always knew this gentle and humble lady was greatly admired, but not until this moment did I realize the depth of that admiration. This was my first Al-Anon Family Picnic, the result of my wife’s constant nagging at a guy who always thought himself too busy for such all-day affairs. This was also my first chance to observe people kneel before Lois, kiss her hands, present her with tokens of their love, and hug her with tears streaming down their faces.
As I watch, I wonder what effect this kind of adoration, this kind of worship, can have on someone, even someone as humble and self- deprecating as Lois Wilson.
It’s now late in the afternoon. The last visitor has said good-bye. Even the volunteer cleanup committee has dispersed. I’m seated on the couch with Lois. Harriet Sevarino, her longtime housekeeper and caring friend, has brought us both some tea and cookies, remarking that Lois always overdoes things and that “people don’t have the sense they’re born with not to see that you’re wore out, and if they really cared they’d leave sooner than later.”
Lois smiles up at her. “Thank you for the tea and cookies, Harriet,” she says. Harriet shrugs, then looks at me. “I don’t mean you, Mr. Bill. You know that. But maybe you can talk some sense into her. She don’t listen to me no more.” Then she shrugs again and heads for the kitchen.
As Lois and I talk, I’m dying to ask the question that’s been bugging me for almost two hours. So, finally, here it comes.
The Lois Wilson Story Page 1
