15
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 office “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
This reply by Lois, meant for all members of Al-Anon, once again underscored her belief that they should become avid readers of AA’s Big Book since it spelled out the very program they themselves had supposedly come to live by.
Inevitably, the Clearing House outgrew the small space at the old clubhouse and moved to much larger quarters at 125 East Twenty-third Street, eventually taking over a second floor in that building as well. By this time, Margaret D., one of the young movement’s earliest volunteers, had started working with Lois on the newsletter, choosing comments and news items from their mail to pass on to their rapidly growing list of member groups. Lois once described Margaret, who lived with her husband, Jack, in Yonkers, as the jolliest and most colorful of the original “pioneers,” as she called those early workers.
“Margaret would bring in sandwiches for the small group of us for lunch,” Lois recalled with a smile. “Then Anne or I would boil some water on a hot plate for tea or we’d make a small pot of coffee and sit around and have an informal Al-Anon meeting. Margaret would stick a cigarette into her long, gold cigarette holder and regale us with hilarious stories about her poor husband Jack. Then others would chime in with more funny stories about their husbands. As hard as we tried not to talk about our spouses, I think that finally being able to laugh at the past, at least some parts of it, helped us all get well again.”18
While Lois and Anne’s volunteer corps was growing, there was still much pressure on Lois to oversee their efforts, to discuss and plan the future needs of Al-Anon, from literature to conferences, and to guide its internal affairs, from organizational squabbles to enforcing the Traditions. All of this, together with her traveling and handling the chores at Stepping Stones when Harriet wasn’t there, began to wear on Lois’s health. She was now sixty-two, and even Bill was suggesting that she slow down just a bit.
It was January 23, 1954, and it had snowed quite heavily in Bedford Hills. Lois spent several hours that day shoveling their long driveway since Bill was in the city at Foundation meetings. She was to meet him there the following day to celebrate their thirty-sixth wedding anniversary. After all her shoveling she felt extremely tired, so she went to bed early that night.
The next morning she was still not feeling well, but nothing could keep her from their anniversary celebration. She left early for the city to do some shopping and to pick up the gift she had ordered for her husband, who was at the Bedford Hotel, where they planned to meet.
Lois was just leaving the store when it happened. She felt a sharp pain in her chest. She stopped for a moment and caught her breath, and the pain eased. She saw a movie theater down the street and thought seeing a good flick might relax her. However, only moments after she was seated, the pain started again. This time it was worse and it frightened her. She took a taxi to Bill’s hotel. By the time she arrived, she could hardly walk through the lobby. Bill panicked when he saw Lois’s condition. He immediately phoned Leonard Strong, and then rushed Lois to New York Hospital where a top heart specialist was waiting to treat her.19
In his wedding anniversary card to his wife, written before he knew of her heart attack, Bill’s prophetic message was: “Come any peril, we know that we are safe in each other’s arms because we are in God’s.”20
After some time in the hospital, Lois came home to Stepping Stones. Since the heart attack was a serious one, the doctors insisted she rest for several months and do no strenuous work for at least a year. For someone who had always been very active, this was difficult. But Bill took a long sabbatical from his AA affairs to make sure his wife did exactly what the doctors ordered.
And she did just that, spending time enjoying some books she had always wanted to read and watching many colorful birds that would pay brief visits to her windowsill.21 Lois later said that most of all, the time off gave her a chance to be with Bill again, to be close to him and spend time talking about things they had just let drift by in their constant busyness.
One afternoon as they sat together looking through the window at the rolling hills surrounding their home, Lois remembered her husband squeezing her hand and pleading with her to do everything the doctors asked. Then he smiled and said: “After all I’ve put you through, I need you to stay around a while longer so I have time to make it all up to you.”22 That’s when something became suddenly clear, Lois said, something she had finally come to realize after all these years. They had both taken such long journeys to find what they had both been looking for—a program, a way of life that had brought them back to each other in a way she had always hoped for, had always dreamed. For today they both loved each other unconditionally, and she knew in her heart—a heart that would soon be well again—that this love, this bond would last forever so long as Bill remained sober.
“I know it may sound kind of silly,” Lois once shared with a close friend, “But I believe that a heart attack can sometimes be good for the soul. I know in my case it was. It helped me to realize again just how fragile life is, just how fleeting. There were no more days to be wasted. I had to focus on what was really important, like how dear Bill was to me and how much God had given us both through this terrible disease of alcoholism and this wonderful gift of recovery.”23
Harriet was also there at Stepping Stones to help nurse Lois back to health. In fact, she stayed at the house for several weeks in order to be at Lois and Bill’s beck and call.
“I had never stayed over at the house before that,” Harriet said, remembering her shock at seeing her usually energetic friend so pale and weak upon her return from the hospital. “After I got her and Mr. Wilson off to bed that night, I found I couldn’t go to sleep myself. As I lay there in the dark listening to that old house creak and whistle in the wind, I thought I’d be seeing ghosts. I had all I could do to make it through those two weeks.”24
Lois laughed when Harriet told her the story and said she offered to move her bed in next to Harriet’s to calm her down.
Lois wrote in her memoirs that Harriet was an absolute blessing. “Her loyalty, devotion and responsibility are outstanding, and it was a lucky day indeed when she came to us. She is my memory and checker-upper. I trust, need and love her.”25
As soon as Lois had gained some strength, she began urging Bill to take her to Vermont. It was already May and the maple trees would be blooming and the wildflowers would be breaking through their green buds. While the Burnham cottage on Emerald Lake was no longer theirs, they could stay at the nostalgic Wilson House in East Dorset and visit with some old friends. Her doctors had recommended walking, and Lois promised to behave and not do anything too strenuous. So, Bill finally gave in and off they went.
Lois was never happier than the times she spent in Vermont and now that she was getting healthy again, her joy knew no bounds.
During the month she and Bill were there, walking through the woods and down the back roads, the sights and sounds brought back memories of their youth. They watched lizards slithering across fallen trees, frogs hopping into green ponds, and squirrels trying to transport large acorns across narrow tree limbs.26 Lois’s memoirs convey her happiness at this time. Perhaps just being there brought back her delightful “tomboy” days at the lake, those growing-up adventures, and her young womanhood when she met and fell desperately in love with the man of her dreams—who was now holding her hand once again as they traipsed through the countryside.
By the time they returned to Stepping Stones, she said, the flowers had blossomed, the lawns had turned green and the deer were once again nibbling on the small trees growing along the hillside. She said she felt refreshed and ready to go back to work even though Bill and the doctors told her it was still not the time.
Perhaps to celebrate her recovery, Lois decided to have a picnic upon her return home that June. Without hesitation, she invited every Al-Anon group in the country. She even suggested that Bill ask a large group of his AA friends. Lois would provide some refreshments, and her guests would bring picnic baskets. Harriet decided to cook up a large batch of Southern fried chicken specially for those who couldn’t afford much more than a bus ticket or train fare to Bedford Hills. With bright sunshine and not a cloud in the sky, the picnic attracted a large crowd from the local area and a number of surrounding states. It turned into a beautiful day of sharing about the transformations in the lives of those gathered on the sprawling lawns of Stepping Stones. And it started a tradition that continues to this day—the Annual Stepping Stones Family Picnic for Al-Anons, AA’s, and Alateens alike on the first Saturday of June.
The Al-Anon Clearing House was well ensconced in its new headquarters on Twenty-third Street by the time Lois arrived back. She was proud of the way Anne, Margaret D., and the others had kept things humming. But it wasn’t long after her return that they all concluded there was much more to be done in terms of providing greater guidance and organization to the movement, which was now growing by leaps and bounds along with AA. Lois wrote in an Al-Anon newsletter:
In the early days of Al-Anon we felt we should learn as much as possible about alcoholism, so we could help our mates. But again by degrees the emphasis began to shift toward detachment-with-love from the alcoholic. The idea was not only that the latter could not learn from mistakes if nursed and protected, but that the nonalcoholic should strive for spiritual development first and foremost. No one can directly change anyone but oneself.
However, detachment-with-love does not exclude knowledge about alcoholism, and such knowledge can be helpful as long as the spouse does detach with love. But the idea of “detachment” can be misunderstood and overemphasized. “With-love” is the important part of this idea. True love does what is believed to be best for the person loved, not what is easiest at the moment. Spoiling and pampering do not spring from love, but from lack of knowledge or from lack of discipline in the “spoiler.” This is where many of us made our mistakes. For example, in protecting the one I loved from the consequences of his own actions, I was not helping Bill.
Most people come to Al-Anon meetings to get the alcoholic in their lives sober and are shocked to learn they themselves need to change. It is sometimes harder for them to recognize that they are part of the problem than it is for drinkers to admit their own alcoholism.
The fundamentals of our program can be learned from our general literature. However, we soon realized that for people in certain relationships, such as male spouses, parents and children of alcoholics, specific literature would be helpful, and we started preparing it. The male spouse was often reluctant to join a group of females, so in addition to literature for men, stag groups evolved.27
At the Clearing House, Lois and Anne and their colleagues had been particularly concerned for some time about the special needs of the children of alcoholics, both early adolescents and teenagers. Many of these children had been coming to Family Group meetings from the very beginning, both at Annie Smith’s home in Akron and in Lois’s kitchen at Clinton Street. They came mainly because their mothers could not afford babysitters or did not want to leave their offspring home alone with a drunken father, especially an abusive one.
But as the Al-Anon program evolved and the sharing at meetings became more intimate, many women started to feel uncomfortable with children around, even their own. So they found another room for them to draw, play games, or simply talk among themselves. What these young people really needed was a program of their own, since many of them had also been severely affected by the disease and its consequences.
In 1958, Lois and her staff voted to appoint a devoted member and mother, Wanda R., to chair a committee to develop such a program. She and her volunteers wasted no time in gathering information from Family Groups across the country and meeting with many for their input. Soon her committee came up with the name Alateen, which was agreed upon. Then, with the approval of all the groups across the country, Al-Anon’s basic program book, Living with an Alcoholic, was revised to include a chapter on the new Alateen program. It consisted of the same basic Twelve Steps and recommended that all Alateen groups have an Al-Anon sponsor to guide them, an individual who already was practicing the Twelve Step program of Al-Anon in his or her life.
In 1960, at the AA International Convention in Long Beach, California, workshops were held for the first time especially for these younger children of alcoholics, now members of Alateen, which had quickly grown to more than one hundred groups. AA and Al-Anon attendees were thrilled by these Alateen sessions and reported that the young people seemed to have grasped the program with more understanding and enthusiasm than they themselves had.
An article in the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade was the first publicity to appear about Alateen. It was followed by many pieces in other magazines and newspapers. These stories were so dramatic and moving that there was a surge of interest all over the country. An article in Life magazine, for example, brought in over five hundred inquiries within three weeks. Lois and Anne and their hardworking volunteers had to set up a special staff, headed by Wanda R., to serve the needs of this rapidly growing and much-needed offshoot of Al-Anon.
By now, the financial contributions from the expanding number of Family Groups in the United States, Canada, and overseas were able to fund the necessary growth of headquarters activities. Henrietta S., one of Lois’s early “pioneers,” was asked to serve as the first paid head of the Clearing House, which later became Al-Anon World Services, Inc.
Shortly afterward, Margaret D., another “pioneer,” was hired to work full-time as editor of The Forum newsletter and to oversee the movement’s other literature needs. In time, and as funds from donations and the sale of books and pamphlets grew, other paid staffers were brought on board to help plan, organize, and conduct national and international Al-Anon conventions and related functions. However, dedicated volunteers remained the backbone of the movement’s service to its members, and Lois remained a chief recruiter until the day she passed away.
As Lois often pointed out, downplaying her role in Al-Anon’s founding and development, she and Anne Bingham simply followed the path that AA had already laid out. However, she also recognized the great need and the great growth potential that lay ahead for Al-Anon since, as statistics show, every alcoholic affects at least four other people, from family members to co-workers.28
After holding several regional and one national Al-Anon Service Conference to elect delegates to serve as the movement’s “group conscience,” the Fellowship held its first World Service Conference in New York in April of 1961. Twelve delegates had been chosen from the twelve states and Canadian provinces with the largest Al-Anon populations: British Columbia, California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, and Texas. By the following year there were twenty-four delegates, and by 1963, thirty-six. That year the number of Family Groups had reached fifteen hundred and had spread to distant lands.
Al-Anon was growing far faster than either Lois or Bill ever dreamed. And by now the groups themselves were running the Fellowship and the general public was becoming more aware of its existence.29 When the Al-Anon Fellowship celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2001, there were thirty-five thousand Family Groups in one hundred and fifteen countries around the world, and its World Services headquarters moved into a large new complex in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
In 1985, Lois Wilson received the prestigious Humanitarian Award from the National Council on Alcoholism, now the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, the organization founded by Marty Mann, the first woman to recover within Alcoholics Anonymous. (Mann died of a stroke on July 22, 1980, at the age of seventy-six.) In giving the award, the council’s board of directors cited Lois for her “unique role in the history of alcoholism” and “her own living testimony of recovery.”30 The award also noted that Lois had demonstrated “that one dedicated individual seeking neither personal recognition nor financial gain can have a positive impact on the health of a society and on the lives of millions of people,” and that she had “pioneered calling attention to alcoholism as a family disease and in bringing hope and health to the spouses and children of alcoholics.” The citation concluded, “We salute Lois W. for her extraordinary contribution to the field of alcoholism.”
In accepting the national honor, Lois, who was ninety-four at the time, said in a moving and gracious address:
I guess I am supposed to say something about how we never thought AA would ever amount to anything, but the truth is, as many of you know, my husband never had any small ideas.
From the moment of his spiritual awakening in Towns Hospital, Bill always believed that if such a miracle could happen to him, it could happen to others, and if it could happen to others, it could happen to all the drunks in the world.
The progress which has been made against alcoholism had other important beginnings of course, and among them is the day when Marty M. first heard of AA. At the time, Marty was a patient at Blythwood Sanitarium in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her psychiatrist had read the Big Book and was greatly impressed. But when he handed it to Marty, she threw it out of the window. Her doctor insisted that if she wanted his help, she would go after the book, read it and go to a meeting in Brooklyn.
I well remember the day she came to her first meeting. We were still holding the meetings in our home on Clinton Street at the time. Marty was afraid of what she would find down there in the parlor with all those men and she wanted to stay upstairs with me. But I finally persuaded her that the AA’s both wanted and needed her, and we went downstairs together.
After that meeting, Marty sat around with a few others asking Bill questions. She had read the Big Book about twenty times by then and had loads of things to ask about. To her amazement, and everyone else’s too, Bill answered them all to her satisfaction.
Another beginning was when Marty got the idea for the National Council on Alcoholism. Like Bill, she had a desire to help every suffering alcoholic she could and created an organization which for more than forty years has been dedicated to educating the public and removing their feelings of hopelessness, and ignorance, as well as the stigma, concerning this terrible disease.
I am deeply honored that the NCA has chosen me as the recipient of its Humanitarian Award for 1985. As many of you know, Bill always made it a policy never to accept awards or honors himself but rather to accept them on behalf of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have followed a similar policy in regard to Al-Anon.
Therefore in closing, let me say that I accept this award gratefully on behalf of all the members of the Fellowship of Al-Anon, and I thank them and you from the bottom of my heart.31
In March of 2000, twelve years after her death, Lois was honored by the State of New York as one of the twentieth century’s most important women, an acclamation that was part of the nation’s celebration of Women’s History Month. The state’s Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services lauded her for her “exceptional role and achievements in assuring service to individuals with alcohol and other drug-related problems,” describing her as “a beloved symbol and inspiration to millions of AA and Al-Anon members.” Throughout her life, the statement noted, “Lois was modest about her achievements, preferring instead to acknowledge the contributions of others.”
It repeated her often-quoted expression that “It takes only one person to start something, but many others to carry it out” and concluded: “Throughout her life, Lois Wilson maintained a simple vision of the worldwide Al-Anon Fellowship. She talked easily about the spirituality of the program, always pointing towards Al-Anon’s common purpose of recovery and service to others.”32
As the prestigious honor from the Empire State highlighted, Lois always made light of her own accomplishments, trying to give the credit to others. This was certainly true in her relationship with Anne Bingham, with whom she remained close even after Anne’s husband, Devoe, passed away and she eventually moved to California to reside near her daughter. The two cofounders were last together in Palm Springs in 1983, when Lois visited for a week and they reminisced about old times.
According to friends, Anne teased Lois about the occasion when they were invited to speak together at an Al-Anon meeting in western New Jersey and planned to spend the night. Anne left all of the details to her longtime cohort, even the driving, which Lois loved to do anyway. When they finally arrived at the church hall for the meeting, no one was there. They were a day early.
But Lois had a snappy comeback, reminding Anne of the time she had sent Lois all the way to Burlington, Vermont, supposedly to make a long talk to a large family group only to have a few people show up and limit Lois’s remarks to five minutes. Concerning their visit in Palm Springs, Lois later shared with another close friend, “Anne and I just couldn’t believe how far we had come and how fast the time had gone by.”33 Anne Bingham passed away the following year at the age of eighty-four. She died as she had lived in Al-Anon, quietly and peacefully. Her legacy in the Fellowship lives on.
Lois Wilson never lost her deepest belief that the principles upon which AA and Al-Anon were founded are fundamental and fitting for all people at all times. She knew, however, that unless individuals accept and apply these principles to their lives, the Fellowship will stagnate, retro-gress, and perish. For, as she often said, “There is no standing still, in life or in Al-Anon.”34
Lois spoke on behalf of Al-Anon many times and in many places, throughout the United States and in many foreign lands. And always in sharing her experiences, she talked about love, the pure, unconditional kind of love members find in the Fellowships of AA and Al-Anon—the kind of love that, if taken home, into the workplace, or out into the world, can bind people together against all strife, all illness, all hurt, and all disappointment. Late in her life, Lois Wilson penned in her memoirs:
AA and Al-Anon are great demonstrations of the love of one human being for another, of people for people. The joy and empathy felt at one of our gatherings are beyond description. Nowhere else have I seen folks so enjoy being together, and in no church or other assembly have I ever heard a prayer recited more movingly than at our Fellowships’ meetings.
What is love? What is it that passes between two people who love each other?
Science has discovered that the emotions of fear and anger actually produce emanations in the human body that can be sensed by other men and women, children, animals and perhaps plants. But I have never heard that science has studied the great force of love.
I suspect that love, too, is an actual physical emanation as well as a spiritual force—a telepathy of the heart and not just the absence of hurtful emotions.
I deeply believe it is love that makes the world go ’round. God is love, and love is the creative force, the force that ties family and friends together. It inspires us to greater endeavor in all fields of activity, in love of God, love of man, love of ideas, love of self, love of things. The well of love refills itself. The more one gives of love, the more one has to give.
Children who are not loved grow up unhappy and rebellious. Even though they may be treated with kindness, that is not enough! They need the positive warmth and security of love. They may even need it physically as well as emotionally and spiritually.
This force, embodied as it is in God’s love, kept Bill and me together and finally, through various channels, sobered him up. There are moments even now when the wonder and beauty of Bill’s regeneration still fill me with awe.
I used to believe thinking was the highest function of human beings. The AA experience changed me. I now realize loving is our supreme function. The heart precedes the mind.
Gazing at the sky on a bright starlit night, we are overwhelmed with wonder at the seemingly limitless universe. Our finite minds cannot envision its extent and complexity, much less the possibility of other universes beyond. Likewise our finite minds sometimes question why a loving God seems to permit apparently God-loving and virtuous people to suffer the tragedies that occasionally befall them.
But our hearts do not need logic. They can love and forgive and accept that which our minds cannot comprehend. Hearts understand in a way minds cannot.35