Their meeting was awkward and uncomfortable at first. Then, after they caught up on news, it became almost pleasant. Elise had heard much about AA and was filled with praise for the good work Bill was doing. She said she knew her father would have been proud of him although, in all honesty, she herself thought Bill would amount to nothing and die a horrible death from drinking. Lois confessed that toward the end, she had felt the same way.
Elise appeared embarrassed at first that she knew nothing about Al-Anon. But, as she listened to Lois talk about it, one could see in her face she completely understood the great benefits such a program could bring to the families of alcoholics. “If only it were around in my day,” she said rather sadly.25
Lois waited until they had finished eating before expressing her apologies to her old friend for the way she reacted. She wanted to thank her for her honest concern about Bill’s drinking and the many attempts she made to help. Elise appeared shocked. She quickly interrupted to say she was the one who should be apologizing. After all, what she did was very cruel, even though she truly believed it was the right thing to do at the time.
Lois reached out and touched Elise’s hand. She explained that she had finally come to realize that not being able to bear children or adopt a baby was all part of God’s plan. That she had come to accept His will. Had they been blessed with a family, Bill would not have been able to devote all his energies into creating and building the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, nor could she have dedicated herself to the problems of the wives and families of alcoholics through Al-Anon.
Elise Shaw understood. One could see it in her eyes. After lunch, they walked back outside to her chauffeur-driven limousine. She offered Lois a ride downtown but her friend said the subway was faster. They hugged briefly and promised to have lunch again soon.
These two women who had grown up and spent their formative years together would never really be close again. Their lives had gone in very different directions. But the wounds had healed and the amends had been made. Lois Wilson went back to the old Twenty-fourth Street Clubhouse feeling comfortable inside, knowing that the program of Al-Anon really works—if you “work it.”26
15
A Heart Attack Can
Be Good for the Soul
HARRIET SEVARINO MADE THE BEST SOUTHERN FRIED CHICKEN in Westchester County. At least that was Lois’s declaration the day she and Anne Bingham stopped for a bite of lunch at Harriet’s roadside café in Golden’s Bridge, near Bedford Hills. It was a special treat since she only made it twice a week, along with homemade mashed potatoes and coffee Jell-O. On other days the main staples were simply hamburgers, hot dogs, and french fries.
Lois had heard about Harriet’s specialty from Ruth and Wilbur and decided to drop by the sweet, olive-skinned lady’s place for two reasons. First, Lois loved Southern fried chicken and mashed potatoes, and second, she understood the hardworking mother of four was thinking about closing the local eatery and finding other means of contributing to the family’s slim income.
Recalling that day much later, Harriet remarked with a warm smile, “She really loved my chicken. She even had a second helping. If I had more customers like her, I would have done all right. But one reason I wasn’t making any money was because my children would always come by with their friends and eat me out of house and home without contributing a red cent. Also, we really needed more room in the place for more paying customers and we just didn’t have the money to expand.”1
Lois’s life was now almost totally dedicated to Al-Anon, with most of her days spent helping wives and families recover from the disease of alcoholism. As a result, she had less time to cook, clean, and keep up the country house and grounds at Stepping Stones—much as she loved that part of her life. She needed help.
Since Bill’s royalty income from the Big Book was gradually increasing, they both agreed they could afford to hire someone to help with the chores and some of the meals, at least one or two days a week. So that’s what Lois discussed with Harriet Sevarino that day at her roadside café while munching on the best fried chicken she could remember ever tasting. Harriet accepted the offer to work part-time at Stepping Stones, planning to keep her restaurant open on weekends and make a profit by serving paying customers only, she hoped.
Lois’s relationship with this kind and giving woman would last more than thirty-five years. Harriet became far more than a housekeeper and cook; she was a trusted friend and helpmate. Over the years, Lois came to rely on her as a traveling companion, a party-giver, a shopping confidante, and later, as a tender nurturer when she became elderly and ill.
When Lois and Bill could afford it, Harriet began working full-time at Stepping Stones and finally had to close her restaurant for good. It was a bit of a disappointment but, as she explained, she came to enjoy being around Lois and Bill, meeting their many AA and Al-Anon friends, and hearing about all their wonderful projects.
“I remember when Mr. Wilson would be home,” Harriet recalled. “He and Lois would sit together on the couch and he would thank her for helping the wives and families of so many alcoholics. Then she would thank him for finally getting her such a lovely home. Then they would both thank me for working so hard, but particularly for my coffee Jell-O, which they both really loved.”2
But life was not always so lovey-dovey at the Wilson household, their longtime housekeeper revealed. There were times when Lois got very upset over her husband’s frequent absences, his constant traveling, or his failed promises to be home from town early for dinner.
“I remember several times how she lost her temper real bad,” Harriet confided. “In fact, one evening she started throwing pots and pans at Mr. Wilson until he finally ran out the door and took a long walk. But before I left, I would see them making up and I could tell by the way Lois would look at me that she was ashamed for the way she acted.”
Here once again Lois tried her best to work the program of Al-Anon in her life. After such outbursts, she would use the Tenth Step not only with her husband, but also with Harriet. The Tenth Step read:
“Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”3
Harriet smiled warmly once more as she explained:
“Lois would write me letters apologizing for her behavior, for losing her temper like that and getting me upset as well as Mr. Wilson. I guess I have four or five letters like that. But after a while they stopped coming because, well, to tell you the truth, she didn’t lose her temper as much anymore.”4
While Lois’s impatience at times caused her grief, she was particularly upset by what it did to Bill and how it affected their relationship. He would simply get up and leave the house and take long walks. But sometimes his lack of attention to details, his forgetting to let her know when he wouldn’t be home for dinner and his failure to put his dirty socks in the hamper would simply try her patience to no end and the outbursts would come. Lois worked harder and harder on accepting the things she couldn’t change—her husband, for example. As a result, their spats became fewer and fewer.5
Another warm and caring lady, who would eventually become Lois’s most intimate friend and companion, also entered her life about this same time. Nell Wing had joined the staff at AA’s General Service Office in March of 1947 as a typist, and five years later was Bill’s personal secretary and administrative assistant.
“Nell was just about the most generous and thoughtful person I ever knew,” Lois said of the woman who became “the daughter I never had.”6
Lois remembered that the AA Fellowship had only recently moved out of Vesey Street and into larger quarters at 415 Lexington Avenue when Nell first arrived, fresh out of the SPARS—the female arm of the United States Coast Guard. A native of West Kendall, New York, a small upstate town near the shores of Lake Ontario, and the daughter of the local justice of the peace, she found the work at AA’s central of
fice “absolutely fascinating.”
Alcoholics Anonymous was not quite twelve years old at the time and Nell was not quite thirty. She said it was such a privilege to watch it grow and help so many millions of people over the seventeen years she worked for Bill before becoming the archives director for AA. And then to watch Al-Anon do the same over the thirty-four years she knew and was close to Lois made her so grateful for just being there.7
Nell Wing came to consider Lois and Bill Wilson her family, and they felt the same about her. In 1954, she began going up to Stepping Stones an average of every third weekend because Bill preferred to work there. He and some of his AA buddies had built a small studio on a hill just above the house where he would write and meditate. Nell would take dictation and then type up his notes for the book or pamphlet he was working on at the time.
She became close friends with Lois, getting to know her more and more as they spent time together. After working on Saturdays, the three of them would take long walks.
In the evenings after dinner, they would have music—Bill playing the violin or cello and Lois or Nell accompanying him on the piano. Stepping Stones in time became Nell’s second home, and Bill and Lois were her family, closer really than her real parents, as she relied on them for advice and counsel in her occasional “affairs of the heart” and any problems as they occurred.8
Nell noted that music always remained an important part of Lois’s life. When home, Lois usually tuned the radio to WQXR, New York City’s classical music station, Nell said. But she enjoyed popular music as well and could play many old tunes on the piano. Often, after Harriet had provided a special meal and a really scrumptious dessert, Bill would say to Lois: “How about playing some of those old chestnuts?”
Lois would sit down at the piano, Nell explained, recalling those lovely “family” moments. Bill would pick up his violin and they would get right into favorites like “Home Sweet Home,” “Roamin in the Gloamin,” “Seeing Nellie Home,” “The Wearing of the Green,” and “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” from his war years.9
Nell pointed out that Lois and Bill were also both great walkers. When they first moved to Bedford Hills, they were practically the only people in the area, so they created their own walking trails, up and down the gently rolling hillsides. As time passed, and more people moved in, the Wilsons had the foresight to invest their growing income in the purchase of eight more acres of the surrounding countryside. So, even when the area became more populated, they managed to keep portions of their original trails intact.
While Lois loved the fall, Nell noted that Lois was also very fond of the spring season when she could view close up the tiniest baby leaves emerging on the trees and bushes of her gardens and sprawling lawns—the pink and white buds of the magnolias and the dogwoods.
“On those chilly days in late March,” Nell recalled, “we would walk all around the property, always with the same sense of awe at the annual, mysterious unfolding of mother nature’s fresh young season. We would inventory the winter’s damage and clean out the debris.
“In the fall, when the air was soft and mellow, Lois and I would drink in the beauty of the autumn colors and would pick huge white and purple hydrangeas for the house—and some for me to take back to my New York apartment. I’ve learned so much from Lois—she was especially in harmony with her environment. She knew the names of all the trees, plants, and birds—birdfeeders all around the place. It was a constant battle of wits with the squirrels and usually the squirrels won.”10
Remembering her many walks with Lois and Bill, Nell spoke of one particularly poignant moment toward the latter years of Bill’s life. He had been ill but was recovering and having one of his good days. “The three of us started on a walk, deciding to try out a new, hilly road. At one point, Lois and I stopped to examine an unfamiliar species of flower. As Lois was telling me about it, I turned to see Bill walking on ahead of us, trudging along the upgrade, hands clasped behind his back, leaning forward as he always did.
“As his figure became smaller in the distance, I experienced a sudden but not unexpected premonition that this was to be the last walk the three of us would take together—which it was. I saw in that vision that Bill was literally and symbolically much ahead of us, while Lois and I were still attached to the things of this world, so to speak—to the roadside flowers and plants and nature. A moment later, Bill moved out of our sight.”11
With Harriet now lightening Lois’s cooking and household chores and Nell lending a hand with manicuring the outdoor floriculture, Lois felt both relieved and bolstered to carry on her Al-Anon responsibilities with Anne Bingham at her side.
Lois once wrote that, outside of New York and California, Al-Anon had expanded most rapidly in those days in Akron and Cleveland, Ohio, thanks to the seeds planted by Annie Smith. But Lois had another lifelong comrade too, who played a major role in carrying the message of Al-Anon to wives and families. Her name was Sister Mary Ignatia Gavin, a member of the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine.
Lois had first met Sister Ignatia in 1935 during her trip to Akron shortly after Bill and Bob began their journey together to create a Fellowship for drunks. At the time, the diminutive Catholic nun with a giant-sized heart was working with Dr. Bob at St. Thomas Hospital and had been concerned about his drinking problem for years. Once she came to see the “miraculous” work her colleague and this “mug from New York” were doing with alcoholics, she immediately joined their crusade. In fact, among the medical community in both Akron and Cleveland, she led the parade, quickly setting up a special ward at St. Thomas for the treatment of alcoholic patients. By the time Al-Anon was officially launched, Sister Ignatia had moved to St. Vincent Charity Hospital in Cleveland where she had set up Rosary Hall, a special wing for recovering alcoholic men and women, with the close cooperation of local AA groups.12
“Sister used to interview the wives of the alcoholics in Rosary Hall,” said Edna G., longtime Al-Anon member, of this dedicated nun who became known to many in both Fellowships as “the Angel of Alcoholics Anonymous.” “She said that she didn’t know who was more mixed-up, the alcoholic or the nonalcoholic. That was when she realized that we were sick too and needed help.”13 Sister Ignatia started an Al-Anon group at Rosary Hall that became the largest Family Group in the area.
Sister Ignatia is revered to this day in AA and Al-Anon circles for her work to hospitalize and treat inebriates as sick people at a time when alcoholism was seen as a weakness of character, rather than a disease. Both at St. Thomas Hospital and Rosary Hall, she carried on her crusade to help them become functioning and productive citizens once again. Before her death, she was recognized by President John F. Kennedy for her pioneering contributions in the field of alcoholism.
“Sister Ignatia,” noted Lois, “always encouraged the wives of alcoholics who came to Rosary Hall to start Al-Anon groups in their own neighborhoods. By 1955, there were more than one hundred Family Groups in Cleveland and the surrounding area.”14
In 1962, Lois printed in her Al-Anon newsletter a letter from one of the early Cleveland members. As timely now as it was then, the letter read:
When I first came to Al-Anon, I was 41 years old and the majority of women were also around that age. In the beginning, we had all women members, most of whom had spouses who were either in Rosary Hall or had recently gone through Rosary Hall. It seems to me that the problems today are somewhat different from the early days of Al-Anon. Women today are working and are more independent. They are also younger. They are not as willing to keep the family together if the spouse continues to drink. There are many more divorces, but fortunately, some of the divorcees continue to come to Al-Anon.
I do think that Al-Anons today talk more freely and express their feelings more openly. Such openness was very hard for me and is sometimes difficult even today. Some of the things we discuss today are things we never could have been open about
thirty years ago.15
Lois’s reply to this letter was simple and direct and came from her own personal experience. She wrote:
Alcoholism is an illness. It is like having diabetes or cancer or heart disease, not a moral problem or a weakness of the will. If we come to truly understand and believe this, why then shouldn’t we be willing to help and encourage someone we say we love to find recovery from this terrible malady before giving up too quickly. We must also remember that the rewards for doing this, for bearing up under such a burden, can truly be great.16
Then, after suggesting that wives and families of alcoholics not only put their faith in Al-Anon but in AA as well, Lois went on to quote a Big Book passage written by Dr. William Silkworth at Bill’s request. The doctor said:
The message which can interest and hold these alcoholic people must have depth and weight. In nearly all cases, their ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves, if they are to re-create their lives.
If any feel that as psychiatrists directing a hospital for alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing wives, the little children; let the solving of these problems become a part of their daily work, and even of their sleeping moments, and the most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this movement. We feel, after many years of experience, that we have found nothing which has contributed more to the rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement now growing up among them.17
The Lois Wilson Story Page 34
