The Lois Wilson Story

by William G Borchert

  That’s when Lois Wilson found more tears to shed.

  9

  Recovery for Whom?

  LOIS WILSON WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WHO WAS FORCED TO SELL some of her treasured things during those dark days of the Great Depression, but like many others, she did so with great sorrow and reluctance. Perhaps it was the embarrassment of standing in long lines at sleazy pawnshops or being stared at in used furniture stores that finally convinced her to look for another job, regardless of the consequences. Besides, with all the bills piling up, she had little choice, especially with her husband still unemployable.

  Fortunately, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who succeeded one-term President Herbert Hoover, had declared a “mortgage moratorium” in the summer of 1933 so that millions of citizens impoverished by the Depression wouldn’t lose their homes. As a result, the mortgage payments on Clinton Street, which Lois had insisted on paying when her father married and moved out, had now been reduced to simply a small amount of interest for the next several years. It was something she could afford even if she earned only a pittance of a salary.1 So, early in the fall of 1934, she found a new job as a salesclerk on the furniture floor of Frederick Loeser’s department store in downtown Brooklyn, not far from the house. This led a few months later to the position of hostess in the company’s interior decorating department, where she advised customers on the design and decoration of their homes and offices. While her salary was only nineteen dollars a week plus a 4 percent commission on everything she sold, having such a responsible position in a career she loved boosted her spirits enormously during a time when she needed it the most.

  For at Clinton Street, it was once again the calm before the storm. After leaving Towns Hospital for the third time, Bill appeared so terror-stricken by Dr. Silkworth’s admonitions—the same ones he had given to Lois—that he took every precaution for a while to avoid anyone, anything, or any place that could possibly tempt him to drink. He feared greatly being locked away in some dingy mental ward.

  In fact, on their subway ride home from the hospital, Bill confided to his wife his memory of driving with his grandfather past the state insane asylum in Brattleboro, Vermont, a large, ominous-looking red brick building down by the river. Grandpa Griffith pulled to the side of the road so they could watch the mental patients through the heavy metal fence. For the young boy, it was an eerie and very scary sight.

  Bill said he recalled seeing the inmates stumbling around and around in circles, bumping into each other and hollering so loudly that the guards had to pull them apart. Others were seated on rotting park benches mumbling to themselves or staring across the thick grassy lawn with dark, blank eyes. He said he saw several who kept pulling their gray bathrobes up over their heads as if to hide from the world or block out the hot sun beating down on them. After a few minutes, he couldn’t bear to watch them any longer and asked his grandfather to drive away.2

  Lois remembered urging her husband to hold on to those memories each time he thought about drinking and perhaps it would help dissuade him. As upsetting as that sounded, Bill agreed he had to do everything possible this time to stay sober.

  For the first few weeks at home, Bill rose early and made breakfast for his wife, who had to leave for work by eight. They chatted about her job, the places she was decorating, and about how well he was looking and that soon he’d be back on his feet and working again himself. But then came the mornings when Lois would be up and dressed and ready to leave and he’d still be in bed. She’d smile at him lovingly and say, “Why don’t you just go back to sleep for a little while?” The implication was, at least in his mixed-up head, “You don’t have to get up for anything, you poor, hopeless thing.”3

  So Bill began to sleep later and later. His brooding soon turned to anger and resentment. The maniac in his brain told him his wife was putting him down, losing what little respect she had left for him. Soon he was twisting and turning in bed, trying to forget all he had lost and all he would probably never have again. Then he would think about the bottles of booze still hidden around the house in places Lois never thought of looking. Just knowing they were there would take the edge off, help him to breathe a little easier. But as soon as he felt the urge to get up and find one of those bottles and swung his legs onto the floor, the pictures of those faces at the insane asylum in Brattleboro would suddenly flash before him. He would break into a cold sweat and slowly ease back into bed, pull the covers over his head, and try to go back to sleep.

  Armistice Day rolled around, November 11, 1934, and he was still sober. He was also feeling much better physically. In fact, Lois had been getting him out of the house for walks around the neighborhood. He did so a bit reluctantly, always feeling uncomfortable trying to avoid the stares of those who had all too often seen him hunched over on park benches or in doorways drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag. Lois felt the same discomfort, but getting her husband healthy again was far more important to her than the humiliation swirling inside.

  Lois had to work that holiday so Bill thought he might drop in on some old Wall Street connections “just to check the lay of the land.” When she reminded him the stock market was closed for Armistice Day, he became pensive. Then, suddenly, the thought of playing golf occurred to him. He hadn’t played since his stint in Montreal, but he remembered Rogers had an old set of clubs up in the attic.

  Though apprehensive to see him going out alone to be with men who might hoist a few, Lois hid her fears and agreed the fresh air and exercise could be just what the doctor ordered. The family purse was rather slim, but there was an inexpensive public course he had heard about on Staten Island. All he needed was fare for the ferry and bus and a few dollars for greens fees.

  They left the house together that clear, crisp November morning, their spirits high and hopeful. As they kissed good-bye, Lois suggested they celebrate the holiday by having dinner that evening at their favorite Italian restaurant near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Bill agreed.4

  After the ferry ride to St. George, Staten Island, Bill boarded a bus to take him to the public links. The man seated next to him was also an army veteran headed for the same golf course, so they struck up a pleasant conversation. Halfway across the island, the bus broke down. They joined a number of other passengers in a nearby pub to await repairs. Here in this bar filled with World War I vets celebrating the holiday, the booze was flowing like water since Prohibition had finally been repealed earlier that year.

  Prohibition, which had also been called the Volstead Act after the U.S. Congressman who had spearheaded passage of the legislation, had finally fallen of its own weight for two reasons. First, people began finding out they could be arrested for violating the act by simply having one drink. In other words, when the police arrested them for public intoxication and the courts sentenced them to the drunk tank or thirty days in jail, the offense was merely in the eye of the beholder—the authorities—because the rules and regulations were so confusing and there were no Breathalyzers back then. In fact, even a Catholic priest saying mass with sacramental wine or a druggist preparing a prescription that contained alcohol could be in jeopardy under the strict interpretation of the Volstead Act.

  So soon a growing majority of the public, even those who initially thought Prohibition might be a good idea, was against the law. However, it wasn’t until people began dying from rotgut booze, and mobsters battling for a stranglehold on the illegal whiskey business spilled blood into the streets, that ordinary citizens finally began to fear for their own safety. Then came a loud hue and cry for repeal—but it took fourteen long years for it to happen.

  Now it had, and Bill’s new friend from the bus bellied up to the bar and ordered a rye whiskey. He cast a strange glance at his companion when he ordered a ginger ale. Feeling a bit embarrassed and in need of explaining himself, Bill offered a brief history of his long ordeal with alcohol: his thwarted career, his trips
to Towns, and even Dr. Silkworth’s theory of allergy and obsession. It was when he dramatically commented that the next drink could put him in a padded cell that his new friend told him if he had it that bad, he sure as hell wouldn’t drink either.5

  Shortly after noon, a substitute bus arrived and took them to the golf course. The clubhouse restaurant was also teeming with the congenial holiday crowd. Across the way, a group of men surrounding a piano player were singing war songs, such as “Mademoiselle from Armentieres,” “Over There,” and “Oh Give Me Something to Remember You By,” that spurred Bill’s patriotic feelings. As he and his friend approached the bar, a red-faced bartender with a thick Irish brogue placed two glasses of Scotch in front of them and smiled: “It’s on the house, me lads. It’s Armistice Day. Drink up.”6

  It was almost a reflex action. Bill reached for the Scotch and put it to his lips. His companion stood there stunned, a deep frown on his face. “My God, is it possible that you could take a drink after what you just told me? You must be crazy.” Bill simply replied, “Yes, I am,” and then downed the whiskey.7 When he turned around, his newfound friend was gone. He had disappeared into the crowd, perhaps fearful of being in the company of a potential lunatic. Bill swung back to the bar and nodded to the Irish bartender, who refilled his glass. He quickly forgot about golf and joined the drinking chorus at the piano. Before long he was back in France, back at the Front saving the world from the invading horde. He was in a small bistro in Paris, being idolized for his heroics by lovely French demoiselles. He was with his platoon on the transport ship home, all lined up at attention as a general pinned a medal on his chest for exceptional gallantry. Soon the singing began to fade as one by one the veteran choristers headed for the links or left for home.

  Now he was back at the clubhouse bar, spilling down another Scotch in an almost empty room and being urged by the ruddy-faced bartender to go home—that he’d had enough.

  But what is “enough” to an alcoholic when he can still stand, when he can still walk, when he can still dream those wild, racy, outsized dreams? It’s when those dreams turn into memories and those memories turn into reality that the fear, anger, and self-revulsion set in. It’s when he stares at himself in the mirror as Bill was doing now and the real enemy, the real provocateur, stares back.

  That’s when the panic hits. That’s when Bill smashed his glass on the floor, stumbled off the barstool, staggered out into the cold, windy street and tried to find his way back home—back from the far reaches of Staten Island to the familiar streets of Brooklyn Heights.

  It was very late that night when he finally arrived at 182 Clinton Street. Unable to climb the steps, he staggered and fell into the basement area below, cracking his head open on the iron gate. Lois found him there at five o’clock the next morning after a premonition had awakened her from a fitful night’s sleep. Bill’s scalp was still bleeding from the fall as she half-dragged him into the basement and plopped him down onto the mattress she had put there some time ago, fearing he might fall or jump from an upstairs window. She washed and bandaged his head, then sat next to him in a chair wondering who to call this time—Leonard Strong, Dr. Silkworth, or the Elmwood Sanitarium, one of the mental institutions she had been told about during her husband’s last stay at Towns Hospital.

  She sat next to him for several hours, dozing off and on. Finally she went upstairs and called Frederick Loeser’s department store to inform them she needed the day off—telling another lie that only added to her own self-loathing. She made some tea and paced the kitchen floor, trying to pull her thoughts together.

  How do you put a man you love but now also pity into an insane asylum? Must you do it to save his mind, to save his life? Should you get someone else to do it for you, like your father, for instance, or Leonard Strong or even Dr. Silkworth, whose opinion on the matter she already knew? Would the commitment to the asylum be for a month, a year, or possibly forever? How could she live with herself when she still believed deep inside that her own inability to have children was one of the reasons he still drank—and now she had completely failed to help this wonderful man who still had such great potential if only this curse were lifted from him? Would it be the courageous thing for her to do or simply the cowardly way out? What would he think of her for doing it, and if he were ever cured, would he forgive her? Could they ever have a life together again? Would he still love her?8

  These were the kinds of anguishing questions that haunted Lois over the next several weeks as Bill hid away in the basement, sneaking out only when she was at work to beg, borrow, or steal more booze and then hide bottles around the house. She now guarded her purse and locked away what was left of her precious things. Where he got the money for his alcohol she never knew. When she came home, she’d search the house as usual to find whatever bottles she could and pour them down the drain, but it was a useless exercise. There was always that one bottle she could never find. He ate very little, and what he did eat she had to force into him. His clothes began to hang off his lanky frame as he lost more and more weight and more and more coherence each day that went by.

  “I was at my wit’s end,” she recalled. “I think I was close to calling Leonard Strong again since he and Dorothy were always so kind and understanding and they knew things were only getting worse. Then something almost miraculous happened.

  “I came home from work early one evening to find Ebby Thacher seated at our kitchen table talking with Bill. It had been more than a year or two since they had last seen each other, and I had heard several times that Ebby was also in terrible straights. But now here he was completely sober and I soon learned had been so for some time.

  “For a brief moment my spirits rose, hoping that somehow he might share with Bill whatever he had found that was helping and then Bill would get sober too. To be honest, though, I really didn’t hold out much hope for that, especially when I saw a half empty pitcher of pineapple juice on the table and Bill trying to hide the bottle of gin he had spiked it with. I was certain that before the night was over, both of them would be terribly drunk.”9

  But this time Lois was wrong. Little did she know until Ebby spoke with her on the front porch of Clinton Street later that night that this man she had known since her childhood in Vermont was actually here on a mission. He had come to help her husband find a way out of his alcoholic morass just as he had done himself, four months earlier, with the aid of two men from a religious movement called the Oxford Group. Lois had heard of the movement but knew little about it or its philosophy.

  The Oxford Group was actually a nondenominational movement founded in 1921 by a Lutheran minister, Dr. Frank Buchman. Among his early followers was Dr. Sam Shoemaker, who was pastor of New York’s Calvary Episcopal Church and also ran its affiliated Calvary Mission in lower Manhattan. Dr. Shoemaker, was to play a significant role in Bill Wilson’s spiritual development and his writing of Alcoholics Anonymous, which became known as “The Big Book.”

  The religious movement focused on the need for people to change—that everyone must undergo a spiritual conversion in order to improve their lives. There was strong emphasis on personal housecleaning, that people confess their sins one to another, that they make restitution and amends in order to repair and restore personal relationships. Emphasis on prayer and meditation for at least one hour each day was also an integral part of the philosophy. The Oxford Group believed that if its followers, coming from any religious denomination, would adhere to such high moral standards, then God could and would enter and direct their lives. The movement’s goal was to set up a worldwide chain reaction—one person carrying the good news of hope and recovery to the next.

  Many people with serious problems and broken lives, such as alcoholics who had “hit bottom,” were attracted to this stringent way of life almost as “a last hope.” Many, such as Ebby Thacher, found help there, although admittedly most of them for only a short period of time. It has bee
n said that the tremendous pain and despair from lost jobs, lost homes, and lost lives wrought by the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression was actually a boon to the Oxford Group, attracting to it society’s poor and downtrodden, its alcoholics and Bowery bums. The movement hit its peak of popularity in 1936, and then its magnetism began to fade. In 1938, it changed its name to Moral Re-Armament and gradually lost the impact and influence it once had.

  Still, when Ebby phoned Bill at Clinton Street two weeks after his harrowing Armistice Day experience and asked if he could drop by, he was bringing with him this dramatic message of change and conversion. Fortunately, his boyhood pal didn’t know this at the time. Otherwise, as Bill said later with a big grin: “I would have told him to go peddle his papers somewhere else.”

  Instead, even though suffering his usual morning whiskey jitters, Bill was overjoyed to hear from his longtime drinking buddy who, as far as he knew, had dropped completely off the face of the earth. But now, almost as if he had risen from the dead, the marvelous, the fearless, the one and only Ebby Thacher would be joining him that very afternoon to toast the long-overdue reunion of two of nature’s true survivors.

  Despite washing up, combing his hair, and stumbling out of his pajamas and into a wrinkled pair of pants and a shirt for this special occasion, Bill still saw a pathetic-looking, red-eyed drunk staring back at him when he glanced into the bathroom mirror. But a few swigs from the bottle of gin he had stashed in the water tank above the toilet soon took care of those feelings. A few more swigs put him into just the right kind of affable mood to receive his long-awaited guest.

  His mind began racing with anticipation. He started to reminisce about all those wonderful times he and Ebby had had together over the years—those practical jokes on their classmates at school; the exciting hayrides and barn dances in Vermont; those early drinking days when they were in the army together before shipping out; the many drunken blasts they shared after the war in speakeasies all over Manhattan. Even the trouble they got into back then—such as their infamous drunken airplane flight from Albany to Manchester five years earlier—seemed like fun now as the memories paraded through his sodden brain.