4

War Changes Many Things

BY THE SUMMER OF 1916, THE WAR CLOUDS THAT FILLED THE skies over Europe were beginning to drift slowly and inexorably toward America . . . but toward an America still not ready to go to war.

Overseas, however, on the war’s Eastern Front, the Russian and Serbian armies were on the verge of collapse under the intense bombardment of the better-equipped and better-trained German and Austrian forces. But on the Western Front, these same forces were locked in almost intractable trench warfare with the defending French and British troops.

On the high seas, Germany’s effective submarine campaign was sinking large numbers of Allied supply ships, gradually depleting the cache of weapons and ammunition necessary for France and England to break through the German lines. But the U-boat siege had become “unrestricted”; the German navy was sinking British and French passenger ships without warning, claiming they carried war supplies.

At this juncture, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who held staunchly to a neutrality policy, demanded that this type of indiscriminate warfare be abandoned. The German government responded by sinking the British liner Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing more than a thousand passengers, among them 128 Americans. Still, President Wilson continued to cling to his neutral stance despite the growing number of leading political and social figures demanding that America enter the fray.

Against this background, Lois Burnham and William G. Wilson were contemplating their future together.

Since Bill still had almost a year and a half remaining at Norwich before graduation and then a two-year stint with the army after that, the idea of marrying before then was out of the question. Well, not completely. But they decided to keep their engagement a secret for a while nevertheless.

Lois corresponded regularly with Bill from her home in Brooklyn—in fact, much more than regularly. She once said she wrote her fiancé so many letters from the fall of 1915 to the summer of 1916 that she could have used them to wallpaper an entire room at Clinton Street. His letters were not nearly as frequent but were equally effusive in their expressions of love and commitment.¹

After a while Lois’s mother became rather curious about all these missives, but it wasn’t until she and Clark received a Christmas card from Norman Schneider that the cat finally crawled out of the sack. Norman simply wanted to thank Dr. and Mrs. Burnham for all their warm hospitality during his several stays with them, adding that he wished Lois and Bill much happiness together.

Dr. Burnham waited several days before broaching the subject with his daughter. Lois was never one to hem and haw. She was always truthful and direct once things were out in the open. She told her father that she and Bill were deeply in love, were unofficially engaged, and would like to make their betrothal formal when the time was appropriate.

Clark Burnham was also very truthful and direct, especially with his children. He said a young man of twenty, still in college and with no career goals except the army, was hardly a brilliant prospect for a son-in-law, particularly when compared to the wealthy young gentleman from Kitchener, Ontario, whom she had recently discarded. But since his daughter wasn’t prone to flights of fancy, he said, he knew she must have given all of this and its possible pitfalls serious consideration. He concluded that if she was so deeply in love with Bill Wilson, he would not stand in her way. He said he and her mother were genuinely fond of the young man and would be pleased to make the formal announcement of their engagement whenever she wished.

Lois burst into tears. She hugged her father, then ran into the kitchen to hug her mother while Clark called her brothers and sisters into the parlor and broke the news. Everyone in the Burnham clan—with the exception of Rogers—was stunned by Lois’s decision, but since they were also truly fond of Bill, they were very happy for both of them.² The Burnhams decided that since Bill was in school and the family would be summering as usual at Emerald Lake, any formal announcement of the engagement should be put off until the fall, when they would have a large gathering at their home in Brooklyn. Because there were no immediate plans to marry, the young couple thought that was fine. This decision also gave Lois the opportunity to spend some time with Bill’s mother, Emily, that summer. Emily had now remarried and was living in a comfortable home on the outskirts of Boston.

“She was very polite but rather aloof at first,” Lois recalled of their initial visit. “But after a while, with the help of her charming husband who was also a doctor, she warmed up and told some very funny stories about Bill as a baby. He seemed to get embarrassed, but she continued right on regardless. All he said when we left was, ‘Well, that’s my mother. I guess you’ll just have to get used to her.’ That was easy since she moved to San Diego, California, shortly after that and we seldom saw her.”³

Lois simply adored Bill’s grandparents, particularly Grandpa Griffith. “He would just rave on and on about his grandson’s exploits as a child. He claimed there was practically nothing Bill couldn’t do if he put his mind to it. This also embarrassed Bill but in a much different way. There was always that touch of pride in his eyes when we left Grandpa Griffith’s house.”⁴

While Lois had now taken a position with a private school, and Bill worked for the local phone company in East Dorset and chopped down trees in the mountains to earn extra money, they did manage to find time together. Sometimes it was a Saturday sail on the lake, or breaking a new trail in the Taconic Range, or simply sitting on the dock outside the Burnham cottage sharing their dreams about the future.

“We had so many wonderful times during those two-and-a-half years of our engagement,” Lois recalled, “both the unofficial then the formal part. We yearned to be married since our love for each other was so intense, but we fought to remain practical and use our common sense. Then the war changed everything.”⁵ The formal announcement of their engagement was finally set for the Thanksgiving of 1916. While Lois crossed off the days on her calendar, Bill kept chopping down trees and looking forward to his first excursion to an exciting place he had only heard about from the “summer people.”

He took the early train from Manchester that Wednesday. Lois met him at Grand Central Station. It was as if they had been apart forever. Even before he could loosen his backpack, they were kissing and hugging as though the hundreds of commuters rushing by were invisible.

Lois had the whole day planned. First they would shop for her engagement ring, as Bill had insisted. Lois led him around to the less expensive jewelers even though Bill kept telling her there was only one place he wanted to go—Tiffany’s. He had heard the “summer people” say it was the finest jewelry store in the world, and for his girl, only the finest would do. So finally that’s where they went, and to Lois’s amazement, she found a ring there she absolutely loved. And it accommodated Bill’s budget exactly—a small amethyst for twenty-five dollars. Tears welled up in her eyes as she tried the ring on for size. It fit perfectly. The sales clerk wrapped the silver ring box in shining pink paper with white ribbon. Bill stuffed it into his coat pocket and they walked out of Tiffany’s arm in arm.

The next stop was the wilds of Staten Island for a picnic by the bay. Back then the borough was quite unsettled, with large open lands and marshy areas. This was Lois’s idea—to show Bill the “outdoors” of New York. Fortunately the day was sunny and mild for November, although a little breezy. It took a subway ride, a ferry crossing, a bus, and a trolley to get there, but it was exciting, especially for Bill who had never seen a subway, a ferry, or a trolley before. Lois knew the area from some outings she had taken with the Brooklyn YWCA. They bought a steak and some potatoes at a small market, then meandered down toward New York Bay, where they found a grassy spot surrounded by marsh reeds.

They threw the potatoes in the hole Bill dug for the fire, and Lois sat on his overcoat while he cooked the steak on a large stick he used as a spit. They had done this often back in Vermont. They treasured those days when they would hike together in the lush Green Mountains, swim in the lake, and work up a ravaging appetite. Things were a bit different here among the reeds on Staten Island, of course, but they had worked up a pretty fair appetite.

It happened before they had a chance to eat. While the steak was still sizzling and the potatoes baking, the breeze from the bay suddenly kicked up into stiff gusts. The wind blew the burning embers across the grass and into the reeds. The dry marsh plants burst into flames. Fearing the worst, Bill took off his jacket and began beating out the fire. Lois grabbed his overcoat off the ground and did the same.

When the immediate crisis was over and the fire completely out, the steak lay blackened in the pit next to the potatoes, and, worst of all, Bill’s jacket and overcoat were scorched and covered with soot. Lois blamed herself. Bill could see it in her face. Bill touched her cheek, then suddenly dug into his coat pocket and fumbled around as though he had lost something. After a moment, he grinned, and slowly pulled out the shining pink-papered package that contained Lois’s engagement ring. The paper was smudged but the ring was fine. He held it up for her. She started to laugh. So did he. They both took a deep breath, kissed and hugged, and then headed for Brooklyn—smoky clothes and all.⁶

Nothing could have prepared Bill Wilson for Clinton Street, not from the moment he crossed the large entrance foyer to the moment he entered the elegant living room where he was greeted by Dr. and Mrs. Burnham. While Lois apologized for their sooty appearance and slightly charred clothing, Bill gazed around, his eyes and mouth wide open.

The oak-paneled walls above the doctor’s massive bookcases were lined with paintings and engravings. The floor was covered with thick carpeting colored in rich, soft tones. The furniture spoke of wealth and authority. He glanced across into the spacious dining room with its brilliant chandelier and mahogany buffet filled with sterling silver and the finest china. It was only then that it struck him. This was Lois Burnham’s world, not his. This was where and how she had grown up, in a style and fashion far removed from anything he had ever known. That’s when he began to feel small and insignificant, like an alien in some strange universe. He felt he didn’t fit in a place like this. Perhaps he never would. That familiar gap inside his gut opened wide once more. It had never really closed, but now it was making him twist and turn uncomfortably like that morning on the porch of the Burnham cottage on Emerald Lake when he felt stupid and clumsy peddling his kerosene lamps.⁷

Suddenly he sensed Lois squeezing his hand. Her arm snuggled into his as she moved closer. The look on her face told him everything was going to be all right. He wanted to believe her. He had to believe her. He needed her love and assurance to feel whole.

Lois, on the other hand, was elated and at ease with herself. After all, the man she loved, the man who was on her mind and in her heart every waking moment, was being accepted by her parents and her entire family. But if she had known what was going on inside Bill at this very moment, she would have caressed him, nestled him in her arms, and told him not to fear, that she would take care of everything.

In fact, she did. The first thing was to have the housekeeper arrange to have Bill’s jacket and coat cleaned and repaired. Then she had the sleeves taken down in one of Rogers’s jackets to fit Bill’s long, lanky arms so he wouldn’t miss the next event she had planned—lunch the very next day with Elise and Frank Shaw.

They met at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park. It was jammed with Thanksgiving holiday visitors. Elise and Frank still acted like newly-weds even after more than a year of marriage. Lois was very happy for both of them. After lunch they toured the city and enjoyed the excited look on Bill’s face every time he stopped and stared at the huge crowds. Traffic was heavy in midtown Manhattan, even back in 1916. Bill was impressed by Frank Shaw’s sophistication and his high-powered Wall Street connections. It stirred something inside him—the magnet of wealth and position. Shaw, on the other hand, seemed quite taken with Bill’s unabashed patriotism and his eagerness to defend his country. While Shaw was several years older, he treated Bill as a peer, which pleased Lois immensely.⁸

The Shaws came to the formal dinner party at the Burnhams’ that evening, where the engagement was announced and Lois accepted Bill’s ring. As they joined the other guests and the family around the dining room table, Bill faced still another awkward moment. There weren’t just one spoon and one fork beside his dinner plate but several forks and several spoons. Which one was he supposed to use and for what? But as they all sat down, Lois rode to his rescue once again. She nudged him very gently, smiled, then reached down and picked up the outside spoon. It was for the soup now being served. He followed her lead and almost immediately felt himself relaxing.

While Lois probably would have denied it, most would agree that it took a very special lady to do such a thing without drawing attention and making her fiancé feel like a fool. As a result of her loving actions, the rest of the evening, and the next four days in fact, went splendidly. Bill found himself telling stories of his sometimes near-disastrous hunting and fishing escapades back home, the hilarious practical jokes he and Ebby cooked up at school, the mysterious and funny characters he grew up with in East Dorset. Before long he had everyone roaring with laughter, including the good doctor and his wife. The family loved him. Lois simply sat back, smiling with pride.⁹ By the time Bill said good-bye to Lois and her family and left Brooklyn Heights, the gap inside had almost vanished, and he was walking with both feet planted firmly in midair. However, by the time he returned to Norwich, war clouds were drifting even closer to U.S. shores, and he would soon be faced with some momentous decisions.

Despite incessant provocation for two years since the sinking of the Lusitania, President Wilson held to his neutrality policy. While his patience angered many, it did help to solidify American public opinion that peace could not be made with such ruthless enemies and that the time had come to support and defend the nation’s allies. Finally, when German U-boats began sinking American supply ships, President Wilson hesitated no longer. The United States entered the war against Germany and Austria on April 6, 1917.

Lois and Bill happened to be having lunch together that weekend in Manchester. They passed a newsstand on their way down the street and saw the headline. Bill bought a paper and read part of President Wilson’s statement to Lois while deep concern and apprehension swirled through her. “It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace and we shall fight for the things we have always carried nearest our hearts.”¹⁰

Lois put her arms around Bill and held him tightly for many moments. He looked toward the mountains and remembered the stories of glory, honor, and patriotism his grandfather had etched in his mind and heart as a youngster. Now it was all about to become a reality.

The U.S. Congress quickly passed a defense bill sanctioning an expeditionary force of 175,000 men and authorizing an Officers Training Corps. Norwich cadets, like their West Point counterparts, were immediately called up for military duty. As a result, Bill became a soldier before he could graduate from the university. He went instead directly to the officers training camp in Plattsburgh, New York, and then for final training at Fort Monroe, Virginia, where he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

As an officer, Bill was given a choice of duties. Despite the great and heroic tradition of military service in the Wilson clan and his deep belief in patriotism, he chose to serve in the Coastal Artillery rather than the Army Infantry, as his friend Ebby and other classmates did. He feared being thrown into trench warfare. He had pangs of guilt over that decision for many years and admitted later on to some close friends, “The great upwellings of patriotism would overtake me one day—and the next day I would just be funked and scared to death. And I think that the thing that scared me most was that I might never live my life out with Lois, with whom I was in love.”¹¹

Bill kept that guilt locked inside, never sharing it with Lois until much later in life, always hoping she would never find out what a real coward he thought he was. It was one more blow to his already low self-esteem.

Less than a week after he was commissioned, he was transferred to Fort Rodman just outside New Bedford, Massachusetts, a camp filled with seasoned officers and noncoms along with gung-ho volunteers. There was a lot of drinking. Almost immediately, Bill’s life changed. Little did he know it had changed forever. For this was where he discovered alcohol—and the convincing voice inside his head that told him it was really not his enemy and, in fact, it could be his very, very good friend. That’s what the “magic elixir” did for this young second lieutenant right from the start. With a few drinks, he no longer felt inferior.

Until now Bill had feared drinking, and for very good reasons. There was a long family history: booze had wrought terrible damage and havoc on some of the Wilsons including Bill’s own father, Gilman. But now it was wartime. Despite being in the Coastal Artillery, there was every likelihood he would be sent to France to command an artillery unit there. Would he have the courage to face the enemy, or would he be shamed in front of his own men?

As a youngster, he had seen how drinking used to fortify Mark Whalon. Now here at Fort Rodman, all the men around him seemed to enjoy a few drinks now and then. It seemed to boost their morale and fill them with camaraderie. Maybe it was just a matter of being careful, very careful.

There was a wealthy family in New Bedford called the Grinnells. Practically every weekend they threw a party at their estate for the young officers like Bill who were away from their families, friends, and loved ones. His fellow “second looies” dragged him there with them one Saturday evening. At first he was the only wallflower in the whole Grinnell mansion. Then a very pretty young lady approached him with a “Bronx cocktail” in hand—a delightful mixture of gin, dry and sweet vermouth, and orange juice. She stood there holding the glass to his lips. In spite of all the warning signs, all his previous knowledge, all the factual evidence, and his deepest fears about drinking, he drank it. Then he had another—and another.

Before nine o’clock that evening, Bill Wilson was playing a hoedown on a borrowed violin for a wildly stomping crowd and patting every saucy young lady on the fanny as she passed by. His fellow officers had to carry him back to camp.

Since Fort Rodman was not too far from New York, Lois visited every few weeks or so—without a chaperone. As she once explained, “My mother and father’s understanding and their trust in Bill and me were very unusual for that conventional era. I would sometimes get strange looks from other parents accompanying their daughters when they realized I was alone. Perhaps they thought I was a ‘camp follower.’ Certainly Bill and I were sometimes tempted to go off alone, but then we would remind each other we had our whole lives ahead of us even in the face of this war.”¹²

Lois was totally shocked one night when they went to dinner with his fellow officers—she thought it might have been her second or third visit—and Bill ordered a cocktail. He ordered one for her too. When Bill noticed the dumbfounded look on his fiancée’s face, he grinned that silly grin and said: “This is what soldiers do during wartime I guess. Besides, I only have a few once in awhile.”¹³

She wanted to believe him. She almost did until the very next visit when she happened to overhear some of his army buddies talking about how they had to carry Bill home a few nights before and put him to bed. Lois later admitted she didn’t get very upset at the time because she believed in her heart that if it ever got any worse, she would surely be able to persuade him to return to his former abstinence. While Lois had a glass of wine on social occasions at home, it was something she could easily do without.

“Living with me,” she later shared, partly with tongue in cheek, “would be such an inspiration, I thought, such fun and so exciting that I was sure he would not need alcohol. Talk about being smug and self-centered.”¹⁴

The year 1918 was fast approaching. America was fully engaged on Europe’s Western Front. Bill could be shipped out at almost any time now. Before Christmas, he and Lois went to Clinton Street and sat down with her parents. Bill said there were strong rumors he could be headed for France by the end of February. They wanted to get married before then—so they could at least have a short time together as husband and wife. Clark and Matilda gave them their blessing. The wedding was set for January 24.

All the young couple really wanted was a small, private affair. Dr. Burnham would not hear of it—certainly not for his first and dearest daughter. Matilda agreed and even had Jewelson’s Printery design special invitations and rush them out to the guest list only two weeks before the wedding.

“My sister Barbara arranged for the church service, the flowers, and the music,” Lois happily recalled. “Father hired the limousine and the caterer. The most difficult part was getting my wedding gown finished in time. My mother insisted on using the lace from my grandmother’s old wedding dress she still kept in a trunk in the attic. It needed to be cleaned and caused the dressmaker fits. But somehow everything was ready in time.”¹⁵

Elise was her maid of honor and Rogers, who had already joined the army himself at this point and later served in France, was Bill’s best man. Apparently because the Burnhams had organized the entire affair without asking any advice from Emily Griffith, Bill’s mother decided not to come. She called at the last minute saying she and her daughter Dorothy both had very bad colds and would not be able to attend.

Bill knew it was a lie. So did Lois. When she had first met “Mother Griffith” that day outside of Boston, Lois sensed that this stern, very controlling woman felt her son was too young to be considering marriage, especially to a lady almost four years his senior.

Lois recalled that when she received word Bill’s mother wasn’t coming, she asked Bill how he felt since he didn’t appear to be very disappointed. He said he’d miss Dorothy but that’s the way his mother was and Lois would just have to live with it. “I must admit I was grateful she moved to San Diego,” Lois added.¹⁶

The only hitch at the wedding came during the reception, when Dr. Burnham saw his new son-in-law guzzling down a full glass of Scotch. The good doctor almost dropped his bifocals in the punch bowl. He said nothing about it then, but the incident remained embedded in his mind. It would one day return to haunt him.

“Not only was the reception crowded with family, friends, and special guests,” Lois recalled, “but many of the soldiers from Fort Rodman came all the way down from Massachusetts to congratulate Bill and I. My mother remarked that Bill must have been the most popular Second Lieutenant on the post. It was really a wonderful wedding and a wonderful two-day honeymoon afterwards in Manhattan.” Lois later discovered, however, that Bill always tried to “keep a lid on it” when they were together—that is, control his drinking. But that soon changed too.¹⁷

Rogers shipped out in February. Bill did not. It wasn’t until early summer that he was sent to Fort Adams near Newport, Rhode Island, to await embarkation. Lois took a small apartment nearby.

It was a balmy evening in the beginning of August, just a matter of hours before Bill was to leave for England. They climbed to the top of a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and stood with their arms wrapped around each other. Lois would vividly remember that moonlit night. “We gazed out over the ocean. I was filled with so much pride in my husband. Yes, I was fearful too but somehow I just knew Bill was coming back to me and we would have a glorious future together.”¹⁸

Bill boarded a troop train at eight o’clock that morning. As Lois waved farewell, she felt a sudden twinge near her midriff. She touched her stomach and thought she could sense a baby stirring in her womb.

Marching through the French countryside, Bill saw the devastation of war in stark reality as they passed the empty trenches where thousands of young men like himself had been blown to shreds by German shells or gassed to death by chemical warfare. As he stared at scarred helmets and damaged weapons strewn across the landscape, those pangs of guilt returned. But he hid his feelings well and his men came to respect him.

His artillery unit was assigned to a small mountain town miles from the front. Still, the constant fierce bombardment in the distance could be heard echoing through the hills and across the open countryside. But the young Vermont doughboy soon discovered that French wine could calm his nerves as well as New Bedford whiskey. The grateful townsfolk supplied him and his men with as much as they desired. So the young second lieutenant would sit at his gun emplacement, drink wine, and wash away his guilt. Before the bottle was empty, he was a heroic soldier once more defending his country against the enemy horde.

Back home, Lois approached her old friends at the Brooklyn YWCA about their program that sent women overseas to help care for the wounded. She was willing to do almost anything to feel close to Bill during this time of war. But then she had her first miscarriage. She was devastated. She had been planning to write Bill about her pregnancy, but now she would have to keep this terrible news all to herself until he came home. She wouldn’t think of burdening him with it when he was already in such a dire situation and had always told her how much he wanted to have children. It took all of her mental stamina to sound cheerful in her letters to her husband, for inside she kept asking herself the question that many women dread—What if I can never have children?

When Lois recovered physically, she went directly to the national YWCA board with her request to go overseas, but they turned her down. Lois was deeply upset that Swedenborgians (her religious sect) and Unitarians were not considered Christians by the YWCA according to the letter they sent rejecting her services. She couldn’t understand why a so-called “non-Christian” was allowed to instruct children at the YW yet not allowed to care for wounded soldiers as she wanted to do.¹⁹

So instead of going overseas Lois headed to New York Presbyterian Hospital for training in a new method of helping the seriously war-wounded recover. It was called occupational therapy. Upon graduation from the program, she was assigned to the “shell-shock ward” at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. During her stay in Washington, Lois was reunited with some of her old friends from Packer Collegiate Institute who made her stay there more bearable. Talking later about her work at Walter Reed, she said, “The experience there was often heartbreaking, for I saw at close hand what war does to young men, and I kept wondering what it was doing to Bill.”²⁰ Lois worried constantly even though she knew Bill was safe and far removed from the front. Before he shipped out, Lois had worked out a private code with him that was designed to get past the censors and let her know how he was and how close he was to the fighting. If he signed his letter “Billy” with the Y’s tail going straight down, that meant he was safe and not involved in the action. If it had a curve, he was at the front. The Y’s in his letters always had straight tails.

While Bill saw no action in France, he did keep his artillery unit constantly prepared with frequent practice firing sessions. His senior officers were very impressed with his attitude and readiness. The truth is, drinking was not interfering with his military career or his personal life at that time. Alcoholism is a progressive disease. The downward spiral leading almost inexorably to an ultimate disaster may take time. But it does lead there eventually and too often, much too soon.

Bill, in fact, was recommended for promotion and received a special commendation from his own unit just as the war was coming to a close.

The armistice was signed in November of 1918. Rogers came home before Christmas, but Bill didn’t return from France until March of 1919. When the S.S. Powhatan steamed into New York Harbor that day and the troops disembarked amid a roaring throng there to welcome home their heroes, Bill ran straight into Lois’s arms. They kissed and embraced until their lips and bodies ached from their love. Inside their spirits soared. Bill had returned home safely. The country was alive with promise. A whole new world awaited them.

Much to her chagrin, the first stop for Bill and his army buddies was a Manhattan saloon to celebrate. Lois wanted him all to herself at that moment, but, after all, they did have the whole rest of their lives ahead of them.

For Lois, the next few weeks Bill was home was like a second honeymoon. Although now working as a physical therapist at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital, she was given two weeks off with pay to be with her returning hero. Bill didn’t want to talk about the war, so she didn’t force him. In fact, they didn’t talk very much at all. She only wanted to be with him. That was what made her happy—with one exception, the new habit he had picked up while overseas: smoking cigarettes. It was something she never got used to.

Bill, on the other hand, while glad to be back, was rather uncomfortable living with Lois at Clinton Street. He was eager to find some kind of job so they could have their own place. He was treated well by the family but felt rubbed the wrong way whenever his father-in-law made what Bill took as patronizing remarks such as: “You’ve got to get on with your life” or “It’s about time to start thinking about a career.”

Lois had been waiting for the right moment to tell Bill about her miscarriage. She was filled with anxiety. But it was difficult for them to find time alone at the house except in their bedroom where, of course, they had other things in mind. She finally drummed up the courage to tell him one evening as they walked together along a pathway near the Brooklyn Bridge.

“When you were overseas, I never wanted to write you about any bad news,” she recalled saying as her heart beat so fast she had to stop walking in order to continue speaking. Bill just looked at her knowing she had something serious to tell him.

“I had a miscarriage while you were gone. Oh, Bill, I’m so sorry.”

He took her into his arms as she began to weep very softly. She remembered him saying with that disarming smile: “Don’t worry, Lo. We’ll keep trying. That’s the fun part. We’ll have a dozen kids, you’ll see.”

Then, not wanting to say it, she let the words out. “But what if I can never have a baby?” she murmured.

Bill looked into her eyes. His voice was filled with emotion. “Lois, all I need is you. You’re all I ever wanted. All I’ll ever need.”²¹

They embraced for a long time. Then they continued walking arm in arm along the pathway by the river. Lois remembered how relieved she was after telling him and how deeply loved she felt at that special moment. If only it could have lasted longer.

Only a few days after Lois had resumed her job at the naval hospital, she came home early one afternoon to find her mother beside herself. Barbara was there in the kitchen trying to calm her down.

“They’re in the basement and I can’t get them out,” Matilda kept saying. “Someone has to get them out. They’re smashing everything to pieces.”²² Lois rushed down into the dusty cellar where her father stored all the wine and liquor he was given by his “GP’s”—grateful patients. Bill and her brother Rogers, now also home from the war, had raided the stash. They were both uproariously drunk and were making a shambles of the place. Broken bottles were scattered everywhere. Lois had never seen her brother so intoxicated before and never saw him that way afterward. With Bill, it was no longer a surprise.

She managed somehow to coax her husband upstairs and into a cold shower. It took both Barbara and Katherine to get their brother into the bathroom and into a tub of cold water—fully clothed. The conquering heroes became so deathly sick from mixing bourbon with wine, and Scotch with gin, that Lois and her siblings worked for more than an hour to clean up the mess. Matilda blamed it on their war experiences and quickly forgave them, as did the rest of the family.

Fortunately, Clark was busy at the hospital at the time. While no one told him of the incident, Lois suspected her father knew something had gone on the next time he checked his liquor supply. But he never said a word.

Lois was fearful Bill’s spree had something to do with her losing their baby. He swore it didn’t—he and Rog had simply started swapping war stories over a few drinks, got steamed at the “Krauts,” and began throwing the empties against the basement walls as if they were hand grenades. He appeared so humbled that she simply let it pass.

The incident did accomplish one thing, however. It got Bill looking much harder for a job so they could move out of the house on Clinton Street. He found one a few weeks later as a bookkeeper for the New York Central Railroad at $105 a month. It wasn’t much, but between that and Lois’s monthly salary of $150, they were able to rent a small furnished apartment on State Street, only a few blocks from Clinton. They were finally on their own.

It wasn’t long before Lois realized how much Bill hated that job. There was nothing creative, nothing challenging, nothing rewarding about it. It gave him an excuse to stop at the corner saloon almost every night before coming home. But soon that would end, she thought, because Prohibition was on its way. It was something she now eagerly awaited.

The temperance movement that had been growing in this country since the late 1800s, driven by social and religious activists well organized by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, finally led to the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution on January 16, 1919—only two months before Bill arrived home from Europe. However, it wouldn’t take effect until February of 1920. It was now almost Christmas. Lois had only two more months to wait.

Prohibition would last fourteen long years, but it stopped almost no one from getting a drink. Instead, it led to speakeasies in every neighborhood, bathtub gin and bad whiskey, and the likes of Al Capone creating an era of crime, murder, and mayhem. And it never once kept Bill Wilson from finding booze whenever he wanted it—and soon, whenever he needed it.

Lois remained encouraging no matter how depressed Bill became at times. He quit his job at the New York Central Railroad and began bouncing from one dead-end job to another, growing more and more discouraged. It was those depressions that concerned Lois the most; they would be with her husband on and off for years. She would try to lift his spirits by reminding him of the dreams they shared at Emerald Lake and how Grandpa Griffith always said he could do anything he set his mind to. She would nestle him in her arms and tell him she was behind him and always would be, no matter what.

Then, much to her surprise and delight, Bill came home one evening with that big, silly grin back on his face. He had finally found a terrific new job, one that offered him a great future. He had been hired as an investigator for the U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Bank to look into defaults of stock exchange firms on Wall Street. And, he proudly boasted, his experience as an army officer clinched the position for him.

Bill had been enamored with the promise of Wall Street ever since he first met Frank Shaw. Suddenly, here was the chance to get his start in the investment community even though it would be through what he considered the rather boring banking industry. The opportunity began to spark those dreams of wealth and position once again and put that old fire back in his belly. Then, almost as an afterthought, Lois recalled, he said, “Since this new job pays a lot more, I decided to enroll in some night courses at Brooklyn Law School . . . if that’s okay with you.”²³

Not only could Bill afford law school, they could now afford that larger apartment they had been eyeing on Amity Street and furnish it the way Lois wanted.

She was thrilled. They went out to dinner that night and celebrated. Bill didn’t drink. She felt in her heart that this was the turning point in their life together. Now all they needed was a baby to make it complete.

The pressure Lois felt to have children didn’t necessarily come from Bill—at least not at this point. It came more from watching those around her raise growing families. Bill’s sister, Dorothy, for example, had married a doctor, Leonard Strong, and was now living in Tarrytown, New York. She already had one child and another on the way. And Elise and Frank Shaw were constantly inviting them to visit their lovely home on Long Island and see their growing brood of two girls and a boy. Even with Bill’s prodding, Lois was finding excuses not to go.

Things only got worse when Lois found herself pregnant again—and less than a month later, having another miscarriage. This time it had been an ectopic pregnancy: the fetus was growing in one of her fallopian tubes. She required hospitalization for a few days before going home.

“We stayed again with my family at Clinton Street for some days since Bill was working and going to school and I needed someone looking after me,” she recalled. “I remember lying in bed staring at the ceiling. For some silly reason I was afraid to look into Bill’s eyes for fear of seeing his reproach. How foolish. He was nothing but loving and supportive. I was my own worst enemy. I never realized then that it was my pride that was causing me so much pain.”²⁴

Bill and the specialist Dr. Burnham had recommended kept assuring Lois that everything would be fine, that nature could sometimes be cruel for a while but then could reward one beyond measure. So after a few months, she and Bill started working on forgetting the past and facing the future with hope and optimism.

Lois began to thrive on the newfound energy and excitement flowing through her husband. He loved his investigative position with the Wall Street bank and was doing very well in his law courses. One weekend while reading the newspapers together, they both noticed a New York Times article concerning a competition Edison Laboratories had initiated to find a few “outstanding young men of all around abilities” to assist and support the activities of Thomas Alva Edison.

What an opportunity, Lois thought, to work with the famous inventor himself. She challenged Bill to take the test. She teased him so much that “as a lark” he accepted her challenge. He admitted later how awestruck he was that day in New Jersey when, after finishing the exam at the company’s lab, he met the famous man himself and shook his hand.

A few weeks went by. Then a month or so. They heard nothing. Then late one night, only a short time after Bill had arrived home from law school, their doorbell rang and a reporter and a photographer from the New York Times came charging up the stairs. The results of the competition were to be announced in the morning. William G. Wilson was one of the winners.²⁵

They snapped his picture with his half-asleep yet glowing wife nestled in his arms. They asked him a million questions about his background, his family, and his plans. He was a hot news story: another young genius inventor in the making.

Bill enjoyed the inner satisfaction of accomplishing such a feat, the resulting notoriety, and especially the pride in his wife’s eyes. But before he left for work that morning, he had already made up his mind about his future direction. He had talked it over with Lois, and she was behind him all the way.

It was 1923. A stock market boom was just beginning. Right or wrong, he would build a career for himself on Wall Street—and maybe invest someday in Thomas Alva Edison’s next great invention.

Bill was twenty-eight now and establishing a reputation for himself as one of the most energetic and innovative investigators at U.S. Fidelity. He was not only uncovering fraud behind some stock defaults but discovering how it began and what it was costing naive investors.

One morning while working on a case in his office, he received a phone call from his old and dear friend Ebby Thacher. He hadn’t seen his close pal in more than two years, not since the last reunion they attended together at Norwich University shortly after returning from Europe. Ebby had been working for the family’s cast-iron stove business in Albany and said he almost died of boredom. A wealthy cousin hooked him up with Baylis and Company, a small New York stock brokerage firm, and he was now plying his wares on Wall Street. They had lunch the following day and for several days after.

As they chatted about old times and new times, Bill shared with his boyhood chum the facts he was uncovering while working at the bank and his rationale for all the defaults and fraud in the marketplace. He said his law courses were a great help. People just didn’t know enough about the companies they were investing in, he told Ebby. It was a crapshoot. People conducting business ventures could get away with murder because nobody was looking over their shoulders and demanding the factual information behind the financial reports they issued on occasion. There should be regular and specific analytical reports, and perhaps Bill was the one to start the ball rolling.

The truth is, back in 1923, there was no such animal on Wall Street as a financial research analyst to meet with companies, discuss their operations in detail, walk the production line, “kick the tires,” and then write factual reports for prospective investors to review. Nor was there a Securities and Exchange Commission to oversee corporate financial reporting, auditing methods, and public stock offerings. Bill Wilson was far ahead of his time in recognizing the need for such valuable tools to protect the investing community.

Ebby was impressed, really impressed. He suggested his friend try out his thoughts on some of the bigwigs at the leading investment firms. He felt confident Bill was onto something. But months went by and Bill still hesitated.

Strolling together one weekend, Lois became very excited when Bill told her about his ideas and his conversations with Ebby. She immediately suggested he see Frank Shaw, who was now one of the senior partners at J.K. Rice & Company, a substantial Wall Street stockbroker. She even offered to call Elise, but Bill thought it better to keep it strictly business and do it on his own.

He tried to reach Frank for an appointment the following week, but he was out of town and wouldn’t return until Friday. That’s the day Bill found himself in Shaw’s large, ostentatious office overlooking New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. The young investigator was more than impressed. Frank sat behind his huge oak desk and watched Bill gather moxie as he prattled on in a rather self-serving manner. He talked about the need to clean up the “Street” and open up the corporate information spigot so investors could find out exactly how well companies were doing in terms of current growth and earnings and future prospects.

The face of the bigwig at Rice & Company began turning slightly pink as the blood moved slowly from his neck to his clenched jaw. When Frank finally spoke, he spoke in a defensive if not belligerent manner.

He wanted to know how, after only three years at U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Bank, Bill already had all the answers. He suggested that he first understand the questions. Bill quickly realized that Frank Shaw had taken everything he said as a personal affront and an indictment of the way his company ran its business. As Shaw walked toward his office door and opened it, he suggested Bill think more about his ideas, get more experience under his belt, put more information in his portfolio, and then come back for another chat.²⁶

It goes without saying that Bill Wilson left Rice & Company with his tail between his legs. He didn’t believe he was wrong, but he knew he had approached Shaw the wrong way. That made him very angry—not so much at Shaw as at himself. He called Ebby. They met at a nearby speakeasy that afternoon to talk things over.

That same week, Lois had seen her doctor. She thought she might be pregnant again. The tests confirmed it.

“I was scared to death about telling Bill,” she recalled. “What if it should happen again, was all I could think about. This was my third pregnancy.”²⁷

She decided to wait until the weekend. She reasoned that Bill worked hard all day and came home too late and too tired from Brooklyn Law School for any serious conversation—except for Friday when he had no school. She would make a nice dinner, tell him the news, and they would have the whole weekend together to assure each other that everything was going to be all right.

It was around six o’clock when Bill arrived home for dinner. He had Ebby Thacher with him. They were both very drunk.