The Lois Wilson Story

by William G Borchert

  He followed the gas smell up to the third floor and began pushing open the bedroom doors. He found Bill Corbett’s body stretched out on his freshly made bed. He had committed suicide by running a tube from the gas jet in his room into his mouth. He reeked of booze. The disease of alcoholism, together with his huge gambling debts, were apparently too much to handle by himself. And he never let anyone get close enough to help him. Then came the aftershock.

  “It was several months before we realized that Bill C. had been selling our dress clothes, which hung in a closet near the hall bedroom he occupied,” Lois explained. “Among the missing articles were Bill’s dress suit, his evening jacket, my black velvet evening wrap, lined with white velvet, and several evening dresses. Suitcases had also disappeared. All these were relics of our well-to-do days.” Lois felt that stealing and selling these things must have added to this man’s sense of guilt. She said Bill was very depressed that he hadn’t been able to do more to help him.20

  But then there were the many inspirational stories, the men who made it, those who proved that Bill and Dr. Bob’s way of staying sober really worked. One of those was Chris Hopkins, the rugged wire-rope salesman who wanted desperately to recover from his alcoholism but didn’t believe he could.

  Lois remembered that her husband often sat with Chris for hours, telling him about his own drinking experiences, talking to him about Dr. Bob and the others who were making it. He always concluded these talks by remarking that if those men could stay sober, Chris could too. One day Bill decided to share his spiritual experience, finally suggesting that only by accepting a Power greater than himself could his friend have his obsession removed and his sanity restored.

  Chris’s face filled with skepticism. He shook his head and admitted this was a concept he found almost impossible to understand or put into his life. He had grown up in a broken home where there was never any talk of God, only that one had to believe in and trust oneself if he were to make it in this world. Now Chris became so upset that he darted out of the Clinton Street house and was gone for several hours. Bill was convinced he had made no headway at all. Later Lois shared what a great privilege it was to see how it all turned out.

  She remembered watching Bill pace up and down the hallway, fearing his talk of a Higher Power might have set his young friend off on another spree. It was dusk when the doorbell rang. Lois recalls her husband opening the door and Chris standing there with tears streaming down his face, telling Bill that he finally understood. That he had found his Higher Power. Lois said she began to cry too.21

  Chris sat with Lois and Bill and explained that after he ran out of the house, the thought came to him: “If Bill has discovered a Power greater than himself, so can I!” He said he began to pray, perhaps for the very first time in his life. He suddenly was so overcome with a feeling of joy that he had to cling to a lamppost as he started crying like a baby. Lois said Chris became a stalwart member of AA, married a short time later, and never took another drink.

  By the end of 1936 and into 1937, men were joining the Fellowship from all walks of life. Many of them still had jobs, others had wives and children. As a result, Lois recalled the growing concern at Clinton Street about the stigma of alcoholism—the fact that most people still regarded inebriates as weak-willed, immoral, unreliable, and usually nonproductive. Once a drinking problem was suspected on the job, for example, the man would often be fired. Neighbors would look upon drunks next door with disgust. Mothers would warn their children to beware of them. Even though sober now, many of these men feared their pasts might be revealed, especially since they were now gathering publicly with other alcoholics at Clinton Street meetings. They feared their names and past drinking behavior might somehow become public knowledge, and their jobs and reputations would be in jeopardy.

  “They had every right to be concerned,” Lois recalled. “The men at the house were good people but every alcoholic I ever met loved to gossip. And I remembered how people used to whisper about Bill when he was drinking, how they would look at him, trying to understand why he did the things he did and acted so strangely at times. How it affected his reputation on Wall Street. Even after he was sober for a good while, many people would still only remember what he used to be like.”22

  Bill finally came up with a suggestion that was approved overwhelmingly by everyone who attended the meetings. It was the concept of anonymity. No one in the Fellowship would have the right to reveal the name of any other member. All gossip would stop and there would only be great respect for each other’s sobriety—whether a man was sober one day or one year. It relieved the anxiety of many, especially newer members who still had jobs and families to protect. Soon members were using their first names only.

  As the Fellowship continued to grow, Bill found less and less time to seek gainful employment. The investigation work he did for some Wall Street firms in 1936 and 1937 was his last serious effort to reestablish himself in the securities field. He did try a few small business ventures over the next several years as the financial situation at Clinton Street became acute, but nothing came of them.

  Lois now found herself worrying a great deal when traveling to and from work, out walking, or in bed late at night. The bills were piling up and her small paycheck only went so far. Hank, who was now one of the more respected of the “Clinton Street boys,” became aware of the money problems and started passing the hat at meetings. However, since most members back then were only beginning to get on their feet, these collections barely paid for the coffee and cake Lois served.

  Despite the lack of resources, Bill found ways to travel to Akron to discuss with Dr. Bob the need to put down on paper everything they had found that was keeping more than fifty alcoholics in New York sober and almost the same number in Ohio. With Dr. Bob’s encouragement and blessings, Bill finally decided to try his hand at writing a book, one that would describe in detail how their Fellowship started, how and why it was growing and becoming more successful. When Hank heard about Bill’s decision, he promised he would make the book a national best seller. But he, like Bill and Ebby and the other mainstays, clearly recognized this was no immediate solution to the serious financial problem at hand.

  Lois often shared later in life that there were times she thought about throwing in the towel, particularly as the financial pressures grew and her husband didn’t appear overly concerned. It was then she felt anger over her seeming role as a drudge, a nursemaid, and a financial patroness to a cause that seemed to succeed one day and fail the next. She had periods of maudlin self-pity and of deep fulfillment and satisfaction seeing that the work she was doing, the effort she was contributing, was truly helping others.

  There were two things Lois always said helped her get through the bad days. The first was her close friendship with Annie Smith. While they saw each other only occasionally since their first meeting in Akron, they remained in constant touch by letter and telephone.

  Lois shared that Annie was a most loving and understanding person. “She had a lot of wisdom and a wonderful insight into people. Not only wives and families came to her for advice, but many A.A. members did, too.”23

  “When I thought I couldn’t take any more and would even hint to her I was considering leaving it all, she would say half jokingly: ‘You’ve already been through the worst. If you leave now, someone else will get the best.’ Then we’d both have a good laugh and I would start to feel a little better.”

  Lois was always concerned about Annie’s health. “She had very weak eyes and smoked too much. Often when I would visit her, she would sit in a dark corner of the living room to avoid the light, smoking endless cigarettes. In the years that followed, that little dark corner of 855 Ardmore Avenue became a haven for many troubled wives.”24

  The other thing that helped Lois through those difficult times was a phrase her husband used when trying to persuade an obstinate newcomer that he could stop drinking a
nd stay stopped. Bill would tell him that every alcoholic he ever knew, including himself, had at least one day or more of dryness at one time or another. All the newcomer had to do was not take a drink today—and not think about tomorrow or yesterday. Just not drink today. That anyone could handle almost anything if they did it one day at a time.

  “So I decided I would try to handle my life that way—one day at a time,” Lois concluded. “I wasn’t always very successful at it, but just the attempt seemed to make things a whole lot easier at times.”25

  Then something happened at Clinton Street that took her mind, Bill’s mind, and practically everyone else’s mind off their own problems. It shook Bill deeply and even made him question the strength of his own sobriety.

  While Lois had never cared much for Ebby Thacher during their growing-up years in Vermont, and certainly not when he became her husband’s drinking buddy during the Roaring Twenties, she had by now developed a warm relationship with him, especially after the landmark visit he had paid to Bill a few years back. She knew the message he brought to Clinton Street that day led to her husband’s spiritual discovery and his dramatic recovery from alcoholism. She was very grateful to him for that and everything else he had done to support Bill since then.

  However, upon Bill’s return from Akron with his reenergized zeal to build a special fellowship for alcoholics, Lois began to notice the frown on Ebby’s face and the hurt look in his eyes every time his boyhood friend talked about Dr. Bob Smith. He seemed to feel put down, ignored for what he considered his vital contribution to all that was now happening. That it should be him and Bill leading this movement, not Bill and some old drunk doctor in a godforsaken town in Ohio. Lois sensed Ebby’s growing resentment over his backseat status when he thought he should be driving the bus or at least helping to navigate the course.

  She also knew Ebby was shaken by Bill’s decision to break with the Oxford Group. In fact, he was still attending some of their meetings. After all, these were the people who had saved his life in the first place and had given him the message to carry to his longtime friend. While he couldn’t argue about the reasons for the separation, especially since Dr. Shoemaker also seemed to be in Bill’s corner, he simply felt confused and a bit anxious about how it would all turn out.

  Now, however, with the financial crisis at Clinton Street, Ebby saw a chance to shine again. He told Bill he still had some good money connections in Albany, some old family friends who might be willing to donate to their cause. He thought he’d spend a few weeks there raising some needed funds. Lois remembered her husband cautioning him not to go, that his old drinking crowd was still there, and he could easily find himself involved with them again. Ebby said he only wanted to do his part to keep the fellowship growing and to ease the financial burden on Bill and Lois. Hank and Fitz and the others patted their cohort on the back and wished him good fortune in Albany.

  Ebby got drunk a week after arriving in his old hometown. After almost two-and-a-half years of sobriety, the man who had been Bill’s sponsor in the Oxford Group, the man who had been Bill’s rock to lean on before Dr. Bob, the man who first showed Bill that sobriety was possible had now fallen. No one knew exactly what had happened, but everyone at Clinton Street was certain that this proud man simply could not make it on his own. That Ebby Thacher, like they, needed the fellowship of other alcoholics in order to stay sober.

  Lois and Bill both had a difficult time from then on handling Ebby’s long periods of drunkenness mixed with his short spurts of sobriety, especially when he came around looking for a handout. Lois vividly recalled one time when she refused to give him money and he crawled around the vestibule at Clinton Street all night cursing her and calling everyone in the house terrible names. Sometime in the early morning hours, after he had passed out, several men took him to Bellevue Hospital. Bill was terribly shaken by it all, Lois remembered. He told her once that the lesson he learned from this tragic situation was that one can still have faith in the message if not always in the messenger.26

  Bill never lost his deep gratitude toward his cherished friend. After moving from place to place over the ensuing years, taking a job here, losing one there, Ebby wound up in Texas. He eventually became very ill, so ill in fact that he wasn’t able to drink alcohol the last few years of his life. Bill established a fund to pay all his expenses and contributed significantly to it himself. Ebby died sober in 1966.

  As if Ebby’s slip, the financial pressures, and the growing distance between her and Bill as he became obsessed with writing his book were not enough stress on Lois, her father suddenly took ill in the late summer of 1936.

  “He was hospitalized and could barely speak as I sat at his bedside,” Lois shared with a close friend. “I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was still worried about me so I kept assuring him that everything was fine. That I was doing all right. I don’t really know if he believed me or not.

  “I think it was the strong will that I inherited from my father together with the strong faith my mother instilled in me that kept me going all those years. I was grateful I was able to thank this kind and wonderful man for all that he had given me before he passed away.”27

  Dr. Clark Burnham died in September of 1936 at the age of eighty-one. Unlike when Matilda Burnham passed away, Bill Wilson was with his wife at his father-in-law’s funeral.

  Lois now felt even more alone. Indeed, losing both parents often leaves one with a great gap, a sense that the strength once there to lean upon is now gone. And when she tried to turn to Bill for comfort, he was often away or busy writing or counseling one of his drunks. There were even nights when they were in bed together and someone would pound on their bedroom door because there was trouble brewing in the house and they needed Bill to settle it. She hated those interruptions but knew the problems could be serious. One night, for example, Bill had to take a carving knife away from an angry newcomer who had accused another man of stealing the bottle he had secreted in the basement. The day Lois felt most alone happened to be the day Bill brought home a new man from Bellevue Hospital. He was in his late thirties, tall and handsome with a touch of an Irish brogue. He seemed lost and confused, as if trying to figure out what had happened to his life and how he had wound up in a Brooklyn brownstone filled with a bunch of crazy drunks.

  This newcomer didn’t take to the other “boys” right off, and Bill was frequently out rounding up another prospect. And with Ebby now gone, Hank was doing his best to cocaptain the ship, but even this talkative promoter found it hard to reach the new guest. It was Lois who sensed he desperately needed to talk to someone he could trust, to have someone convince him that if he didn’t drink, everything would work out. He needed someone he could believe in—so he turned to Lois.

  Soon they were spending time together, Lois and this tall, handsome newcomer. They would chat in the kitchen before she left for work in the morning, then walk in the evening along the East River by the Brooklyn Bridge, talking about their hopes and their dreams. Lois began to feel an attraction to this charming man, the kind of attraction she hadn’t felt since she first met Bill. And she didn’t know what to do about it—nor did she know where this infatuation might lead. At the moment, she really didn’t care.28

  12

  Facing Her Own Addiction

  HE NEARLY BOWLED OVER SEVERAL LADY CUSTOMERS THAT afternoon as he rushed excitedly into Loeser’s department store to tell Lois the great news. For Bill, it was the answer to all their problems. Lois would no longer have to work. He could pay off all their creditors. And the Clinton Street gang would have a large and comfortable facility in which to meet, one that would accommodate their growing needs.

  Heading straight for the home furnishings department, Bill could still hear the startling words of Charlie Towns, the owner of Towns Hospital, asking him to be his partner.1 It all happened less than two hours ago, and he was still shaking his head in dis
belief. He could hardly wait to see the joy and delight on his wife’s face when he told her.

  Just yesterday Charlie had called Bill at the house and asked him to drop by, that he had an interesting business proposition to discuss with him. When they met this morning, the flamboyant owner didn’t have to explain the history of his well-known establishment nor its lucrative past, when famous celebrities such as John Barrymore and W.C. Fields poured thousands of dollars into Charlie’s coffers for a few discreet weeks of drying out. Bill had heard those stories over and over again during his own turbulent visits there. But what he didn’t know until Mr. Towns opened his books and disclosed his recent financial statements was just how seriously the business had declined in recent years. The nationwide Depression had taken its toll on jobs and expendable income.

  Then Charlie laid out his proposal. He said that both he and Dr. Silkworth had developed enormous respect for Bill as they watched the “cures” he wrought on helpless drunks, many of whom were now rebuilding their lives at Clinton Street while others were already back out in society, sober and prospering. He and Dr. Silkworth, he added, were convinced their former patient’s program was not only a proven success, but—and now Charlie was speaking strictly for himself—it could become a real “cash cow,” if handled properly. The owner then patted Bill on the back and proposed that he move his entire operation into the hospital and make Towns his headquarters. He was prepared to give him an office, a very decent drawing account, and a generous share of the profits engendered by all the paying patients he was bound to attract. In no time, Charlie remarked, he expected Bill to become the most respected and successful lay therapist in New York with the opportunity to launch similar facilities around the country.

  The washed-up Wall Street genius who only moments before was convinced he had little or no hope of rebuilding his business reputation did not have to ponder Charlie’s proposition for very long to realize its tremendous upside potential. It even surpassed the dreams he had in Akron before the proxy battle turned against him. It appealed to all those egocentric instincts he thought had run their course—his drive for money, power, and prestige. They were all back now in force. He told his smiling suitor he’d have an answer for him in twenty-four hours, adding that he saw no major obstacles.2