7
THE RAMPAGING BULL OF THE 1929 STOCK MARKET RAN TOTALLY unabated not only through Wall Street but through the entire country as well.
Stockbrokers like Bill Wilson became revered seers since practically everything they recommended went up. Neighborhood barbershops hawked the latest stock tips, the corner shoeshine man owned at least a thousand shares of the riskiest penny stock available, and every overzealous political contender was promising a “chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”
Prohibition-born bootleggers were getting as rich as Wall Street tycoons and the female “flapper set” were setting the dress styles not only for Broadway but for B-girls and college coeds as well. As history now tells us, this period in America was aptly named the Roaring Twenties.
The country was feeling good about itself, and rightly so. After all, hadn’t its doughboys brought to a successful conclusion “the war to end all wars?” Not only was the economy growing, but voters had seen the end of the scandal-ridden administration of Warren G. Harding, the nation’s twenty-ninth president. While free from corruption himself, Harding had imprudently appointed at the behest of his unscrupulous political supporters an interior secretary who was close to “Big Oil.” Accused of taking bribes for transferring large government mineral reserves to private interests, the interior secretary and his president found themselves in the spring of 1923 caught up in what was called the Teapot Dome scandal, named after the oil fields in question.
The betrayal of his cabinet officer and the never-ending scandal headlines broke President Harding’s spirit. Already in poor health, this was said to have led to his untimely death only months later. His vice president, the taciturn John Calvin Coolidge, was sworn in as the thirtieth president of the United States in August of that year. Coolidge happened to be a Green Mountain man himself, born in Plymouth, Vermont, only a short distance from Bill Wilson’s clan.
Plain in appearance and unimpressive in speech, Coolidge was an enigmatic man who slowly gained back the trust of the American people through his honesty, his openness, his quiet political skills, and his practical Yankee common sense. As a result, he was re-elected to his own four-year term in 1924 by a large plurality.
Calvin Coolidge believed that the backbone of America was its moral, hardworking men and women, not the get-rich-quick schemers and the loose-moral types. He told his cabinet officers: “Let men in public office enjoy the light that comes from burning the midnight oil, not the limelight.”
While ridding the nation of scandal and demanding a lily-white administration, Coolidge oversaw a peaceful land and an expanding economy. But in the end, he made one gigantic blunder. He turned both a blind eye and a deaf ear to the inordinate speculative boom in the stock market which, less than a year after Coolidge left office in 1928, would have enormous repercussions on the nation.
One dramatic example of the stock market’s extreme inflation was the fact that a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1929 sold for $625,000, while only ten years later that same seat sold for just $17,000.
In the midst of all this exuberance, Bill Wilson, in spite of his continued heavy drinking, was swept along with the tide and perhaps, like so many other wide-eyed optimists and fellow inebriates at the time, thought the financial orgy would never end.
But Lois Wilson, even with the little knowledge she had garnered about the workings of the stock market, grew more wary and more concerned by the day. Her Clark Burnham genes were telling her that life was not a free lunch, and those butterflies still in her stomach were whispering that one day soon, someone would have to pay the piper.1
Meanwhile, at Tobey & Kirk Investment Partners, one of the “Waspier” firms on the Street and quite protective of its impeccable reputation, Frank Shaw was trying to keep Bill on a tight leash. It wasn’t long, however, before several partners began hearing stories about this Bill Wilson fellow and started warning Shaw not to let his escapades affect the firm or its prestigious clients.
Much to Lois’s chagrin, her husband was also becoming an unwelcome guest in her own family. Once the lovable jokester and the life of the party, he was now often the pin that took all the air out of the balloon.
One particular evening, he showed up late and tipsy at a concert in which his mother-in-law was performing with the well-known Woodman Choral Club of New York. While squeezing into his seat, he stepped on Rogers’s toes, apologized loudly and profusely, then sat down and proceeded to fall asleep and snore. Fortunately, Dr. Burnham was working late at the hospital. In the lobby, after the concert, while Bill was in the men’s room, Rogers took Lois aside. He told her as kindly as he could that Bill’s behavior had become embarrassing. He said she should think twice about bringing Bill to family affairs if he was drinking.2
When they arrived home that night, Lois lost her temper once again. She berated her husband for constantly causing her such humiliation, especially in front of her family and friends. She screamed and sobbed as he swayed before her, his eyes half-closed and his mind somewhere in oblivion. As Lois later shared so many times with the wives of other alcoholics, yelling at a drunk when he’s drunk is like the sound of that proverbial tree falling in the forest. It’s never heard.
While Lois and Bill continued to prosper financially, their relationship continued to deteriorate. There were more and more unhappy scenes in their luxurious apartment in Brooklyn Heights, more and more embarrassing moments with Lois’s family, friends, and business associates, and more and more of Bill’s empty promises to reform his ways.
So now Lois was beginning to isolate herself. She preferred staying home, reading, sewing, or on occasion visiting a museum by herself. But there were times she was forced to attend a luncheon or dinner with Bill and his clients or a gathering of their spouses.3
At one such reluctant luncheon of Wall Street wives, the waiter came by to take their drink order. One well-preened lady requested her usual Manhattan cocktail, another a very dry martini, and the other a pink lady. When Lois simply ordered tonic water, it immediately prompted comments from the others about whether they should be drinking so early in the day.
Lois recalled a flush-faced, rather heavyset woman questioning herself about her love for dry martinis and her husband’s opinion that they made her talk too much and too loosely about their private affairs. Another lady prided herself on never drinking before noon and never having more than three cocktails in a single day—or perhaps four. “They make me too flirtatious,” she giggled.
But the third lady grew quite serious when she told about her Irish neighbor who drank so much she finally had to take “a pledge.”
“That’s sort of an Irish thing,” she remarked. “They do it with a priest.”
“Does it work?” Lois asked very cautiously, always fearing to give away any possible hint that a drinking problem might exist in her own household. Later she learned that her husband’s boozing was common gossip among most of these Wall Street matriarchs.
“I guess it does,” the lady replied. “At least I haven’t seen her staggering around her garden lately—or kicking the cat.”
Despite the laughter from her luncheon companions, Lois latched on to this interesting bit of information and brought it home with her, trying to figure out how she could best use it with Bill.4
A few mornings later, as her husband sat on the edge of their bed with his head in his hands, trying to recover from another drinking bout, Lois came in and sat beside him. She was holding her family Bible. While Bill was not a churchgoer, Lois did attend services at the Swedenborgian church and had strong spiritual convictions at this time in her life. She told Bill she knew how badly he wanted to stop drinking, how hard he had been struggling, how ashamed he was for all the things he was doing. Perhaps, she said, simply promising himself and her that he would do it was not enough. Maybe he needed to promise Almighty God Himself. She gently placed the Bible into her husband’s trembling hands and asked him to write a pledge in it.
Her remarks struck Bill’s cobwebbed brain like an all-too-familiar headline from yesterday’s newspaper. His wife had no idea how many times he had tried to reach out for help to the God she was talking about—to a God he really didn’t believe had any personal concern for him anymore, if He ever had. She had no idea how many times he had tried to pray as she did, and when that didn’t work, how he tried to beg, to plead, to grovel, all to no avail.
At this moment in his life, Bill Wilson had lost whatever connection he once may have had to God. And he knew exactly when it began—that day in the chapel at Burr and Burton Academy when the headmaster announced Bertha Banford had died. He remembered telling God to “go to hell.” When he met Lois, he tried to grab on to her faith, her deep spiritual convictions. But when you start to lose faith in yourself, as he did each time he came off another binge, why, he thought, should a God, a Supreme Being, have any use for a drunken bum like him?
But this very morning, as he sat on the edge of the bed next to Lois and saw the love and faith in the eyes of his devoted and supportive wife, he was moved. He was touched. He could not refuse her request. It was October 20, 1928, and he wrote in that Bible—in what Lois always said was the most sacred place she knew—these words: “To my beloved wife that has endured so much, let this stand as evidence of my pledge to you that I have finished with drink forever.”
He was drunk before the end of the week.
On Thanksgiving Day, only a month later, he wrote in her Bible again, “My strength is renewed a thousandfold in my love for you.”5
Then he set off the next day on another toot. In January of 1929, he scrawled in the Bible for a third and final time. His handwriting was barely legible. “To tell you once more that I am finished with it!”
Deep in his heart, Bill knew even these sincerest of “pledges” were useless in the face of his intense craving for booze. His pain and despair were evident in the following note he wrote to Lois in the spring of 1929:
“I have failed again this day. That I should continue to even try to do right in the grand manner is perhaps a great foolishness. Righteousness simply does not seem to be in me. Nobody wishes it more than I. Yet no one flouts it more often.” As he had told Lois earlier, “I’m halfway to hell now and going strong.”6
Some years later, after founding Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill would describe such remarks as “a big fat bout of self-pity.”7
Lois, however, could tell from notes like this that her husband desperately wanted to stop, and she continued to seek all kinds of ways to help him. Randolph, the night doorman at their luxury apartment building, was one of those many ways. He was a warm-hearted Rosicrucian from the West Indies. When Bill came staggering home in the wee hours, Randolph would always help him into the elevator and up to their apartment.
Lois grew comfortable with the doorman’s quiet way of caring, and especially his way of keeping it all to himself. They became good friends and she soon found she was not the least embarrassed talking to this kind gentleman about her husband’s problem since Randolph had told her: “I have the same problem with several in my own family. It’s the Devil’s curse.” She would smile, since that’s what her mother always used to say.
At Lois’s request, Randolph kept tabs on Bill, discovering what speakeasies he frequented in the neighborhood and, when he was late coming home, he would actually leave his post, search the bars, find Bill, and drag him home to Lois.
Bill himself was also touched by Randolph’s concern. When he and Lois learned his daughter was taking piano lessons, they gave the doorman a check for $2,500 to buy her a piano. Randolph remained a good friend of the Wilsons for many years.
In the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, one often hears mention of something called the “invisible line.” This refers to the point at which a heavy drinker becomes an alcoholic, when his desire for a drink turns into a craving or an addiction. He or she then has a constant mental obsession for alcohol, which becomes a physical compulsion once the drink is taken. If there is such a line, Bill Wilson crossed it early in 1929.
The young Wall Street wizard began to imbibe as he never had before—straight shots with no chasers. Often the shots were doubles. He needed it now to “clear the vision,” to fuel his fading dreams. With just enough in him, he could imagine himself the chairman of J.P. Morgan, a director of Standard Oil, an advisor to John D. Rockefeller himself. With a few more, he fell into oblivion—into a blackout from which he sometimes emerged in strange and unusual places—in doorways, on park benches, in grassy fields, or at the bar in another speakeasy far removed from the one in which he started out. At other times he’d come to in Randolph’s arms, on his bathroom floor, or in his own bed with Lois placing an ice pack on his throbbing head.
He would often say to himself, so what if I enjoy boozing? I’m healthy, wealthy, good at my job, and I have the support of a devoted wife. This was the story he would tell himself the night before. It was always a different story the morning after.
By now, Lois clearly recognized her husband’s drinking was completely out of control, yet she remained totally committed to helping him in any way she could. In her later years, she once shared some of her most intimate feelings with a very close friend: “I tried so hard to let him know how much I loved him and that I would always be there for him. I know now that was wrong. I did love him, but I was enabling him to drink because there were no consequences with me and he knew it.
“As Bill drank more and more, he was often impotent. We wouldn’t make love for months at a time. Then I’d manage to coax him to take a few weeks off. I’d get him back out into the country, up to Emerald Lake, into the Green Mountains he so loved. We’d camp near a running brook and make love under the stars. These jaunts into the countryside became like a series of honeymoons—with hell in between. Then, after a while, these brief series of honeymoons stopped and there was nothing left but hell.”8
It was while Lois was packing for another of those brief “honeymoons” in Vermont that Ebby Thacher phoned. He had been in Albany, New York, for almost a year trying to save the family business. While Lois never voiced it to Bill, Ebby’s absence from the scene pleased her greatly since it meant one less drinking buddy to contend with.
Bill, on the other hand, missed his boyhood chum, so when he returned Ebby’s call and learned his help was needed, there was no way he could turn him down. The Thacher family’s cast-iron woodstove business was under heated competition from those new-fangled gas stoves. Ebby told Bill the company needed an influx of new capital to survive.
“There’s been one too many boozers trying to run this damn place for too many years,” Lois recalled Bill’s friend saying.9
Bill had to chuckle, wondering if Ebby was including himself among the group. But he kept his thoughts to himself. Like most alcoholics, both Bill and Ebby could recognize a drinking problem in others long before they could see it in themselves.
Lois was disturbed when her husband told her the story and concluded that he had to try to help his good friend. She put her foot down. Lois insisted he come to Emerald Lake and let Ebby find some other way to solve his dilemma. It was the first real argument they had had in a long time when Bill was not in his cups.
In the end, they reached a compromise, which Lois reluctantly accepted—as if she had a choice. They would take the train together but Bill would get off in Albany and she would continue on to East Dorset. He swore he wouldn’t take more than forty-eight hours to wrap things up and then would hop the next train and join her at the lake. It sounded very reasonable except, based on her past experiences, forty-eight hours could mean a week or two once he and his pal started drinking. Bill tried to convince her once again that it was all going to be strictly business. He put on that silly grin, crossed his heart and hoped to die, and she half-bought it as usual.
Bill and Ebby met at a speakeasy in downtown Albany. Where else? They tied one on but managed to sober up long enough to tour the cast-iron stove plant the next afternoon. Even before leaving New York, the experienced analyst knew in his heart this would be a hopeless venture. Once he saw the factory, he was convinced of it. Why would anyone keep making buggy whips, he thought, after Henry Ford created the auto assembly line? Why make woodstoves in the new age of natural gas?
But he put up a good front for his boyhood pal, saying he’d do whatever was possible. Ebby was no fool, however. He could tell from his best friend’s demeanor there would be no influx of new capital for the failing family business.
That night they both got roaring drunk. They were joined in the speakeasy by several of Ebby’s friends from the Albany airfield, barnstormers who called themselves Flyers Incorporated. When they heard Bill had to hurry to East Dorset, Vermont, in order to stay out of his wife’s doghouse, one of the heavy-drinking pilots—a Ted Burke by name—offered to fly him there the next morning for a small fee. Ebby said he’d like to come along to see Lois and some other old friends in Manchester.
So they partied all night and were flying higher than kites long before they took off from the Albany airfield the next morning.
It just so happened that the town of Manchester had recently completed its brand-new airport and was holding ceremonies to dedicate it the very day Bill, Ebby, and their pilot were due to arrive. Lois, having received a phone call from her husband the night before, was at the airport to pick him up. She was surprised by the crowd on hand, which included the mayor, the town band, and a delegation of excited citizens awaiting the arrival of the first official plane to touch down on the brand spanking new runway. To be sure, it was not the plane flown by a drunken barnstormer carrying two drunken passengers.
When Bill shared his experiences later on in Alcoholics Anonymous, he loved to tell the hilarious story of what happened next, although he always did it with some deference to Lois, who at the time saw no humor in it at all.
“We circled the field. But meantime, all three of us had been pulling at a bottle. Somehow, we lit on a pretty bumpy meadow. The delegation charged forward. It was up to Ebby and me to do something, but we could do absolutely nothing. We somehow slid out of the cockpit, fell on the ground, and there we lay, immobile. Such was the history-making episode of the first airplane to light at Manchester, Vermont.”10
For Lois, it was simply another shameful and embarrassing episode. Several of her friends were part of the delegation, and others there were close to her parents. She ran off sobbing, hoping Bill wouldn’t follow. But he did, and in spite of his apologies to the mayor and other leading citizens, Lois refused to accept his remorseful pleadings. They returned to New York the following week without a brief “honeymoon” and with only the expectancy of more hell to follow. And it did.
It was only a few weeks after they returned to Brooklyn Heights that Elise Shaw showed up unexpectedly at Lois’s apartment. It was a hot August afternoon. She apologized for not calling ahead but explained somewhat falteringly that she had to work up some courage to come. Lois didn’t understand at first.
Politely refusing a cup of tea, Elise sat uncomfortably on the couch in the living room and began by telling her dear friend that Frank was under a great deal of pressure from his partners at Tobey & Kirk to fire Bill. This didn’t come as any great surprise to Lois. In fact, she had considerable admiration for Frank Shaw for putting up with her husband’s antics this long. She had often thought that losing his job might be just the jolt Bill needed to straighten out.
While these thoughts raced through her head, she vaguely heard Elise recite a series of incidents Frank had told her about—Bill’s getting drunk on business trips, embarrassing some important clients, having nasty arguments with several executives at the firm. Lois heard nothing really new in her friend’s litany except that Frank had given her husband his final warning.
Elise stopped for a moment and stared intently at this tender and kind lady she had known most of her life. Why was it so impossible to reach her, to get her to understand? She then said very simply that regardless of Lois’s continued denial of the seriousness of her husband’s problem, she should at least seek some professional help for him—for the sake of Bill’s health and for the sake of their marriage.
Lois recognized the deep sincerity in her friend’s eyes and trembling voice. She clumsily expressed her gratitude for Elise’s concern, finally admitting she was absolutely right in everything she said. That the problem had grown much worse, although it was not completely hopeless.
Then suddenly Lois began talking at length about all she was still trying to do to help her husband, the pledges he was making in her Bible, the good times they had in Vermont, that he still wanted to stop so badly perhaps God would soon intervene.
Elise had all she could take. She rose from the couch and glared at Lois. “For God’s sake,” she said in a voice her childhood friend had never heard before, “you’re dealing with something you have no control over. Why do you think I told the adoption agency all about Bill’s drinking problem? Why?”
Then Elise Shaw burst into tears.
“I’m sorry, Lois . . . but . . . I had to do it. And . . . you still don’t understand.”
Then Lois Wilson’s oldest and dearest companion turned and walked out of the apartment. Lois stood there in the middle of her well-furnished living room staring after her with those shocking and painful words still ringing in her ears: “I told the adoption agency all about Bill’s drinking problem.”11
That night when Randolph the doorman half-carried her husband through the front door and put him to bed, Lois was still seated in the darkened parlor staring out the window, her eyes red and glassy. Randolph simply whispered good night and left her there undisturbed. For the next several days, she walked around in a trance. She wouldn’t answer the telephone or go out. She walked into another room whenever Bill wanted to talk. He knew something terrible had happened and as usual believed he had caused it. Since his wife refused to speak with him, he let her be and went to work with every intention of heeding Frank Shaw’s final warning.
The emotional fog eventually lifted, and Lois came to terms with what happened between her and Elise. While it would take quite some time for their painful rift to heal, it did help her begin to understand the sheer hopelessness of the problem she faced. But for the moment and for some time to come, Lois put it all completely out of her mind. As she would share about it later on, “While it was all so terribly painful, it did eventually help me realize that Bill just couldn’t stop with only my help. Neither of us knew at the time that he had a physical, mental, and spiritual illness. The traditional theory that drunkenness was a moral weakness kept us both from thinking clearly on the subject.
“I always considered my husband a morally strong person despite his alcoholism. His sense of right and wrong was vivid, and he also respected the rights of other people. When he was sober, for example, he would never walk across another person’s lawn although I would at times. He had plenty of willpower but neither of us knew that willpower just wouldn’t work against alcohol.”12
Now in a deep quandary about why his wife wasn’t speaking to him, Bill found himself quite eager to comply with her very next request—that he have a complete physical examination and talk with someone knowledgeable about his inability to stop drinking on his own. When Bill suggested he seek the advice of his brother-in-law, Dr. Leonard Strong, Lois had no qualms. She had come to deeply respect Leonard and knew he was already concerned about her husband. So was her sister-in-law Dorothy, whom she had grown very fond of even though they rarely talked about personal matters.
Bill was actually surprised that Dr. Strong, a man he had come to greatly respect and admire, knew so much about the progressive nature of his problem—that he might stay on the wagon for several weeks but once he picked up another drink, the compulsion would set in and he would want more and more—that he drank to fortify himself for important occasions—that he drank to relax his nerves after a busy day on Wall Street—that he often lied, especially to Lois, about how many drinks he had actually had.
It seems more than coincidental that Leonard had learned much of this from his good friend and colleague Dr. William Duncan Silkworth, who ran Towns Hospital in New York City, an institution that specialized in the treatment of alcoholics—coincidental because Dr. Silkworth would play a prominent role in Bill’s eventual sobriety and building the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Dr. Strong, however, was not yet convinced Bill was bad enough to be admitted to Towns, so he decided to send him to another colleague in Manhattan first for a complete physical examination. That would tell him what he needed to know medically.
Much to everyone’s surprise, including Lois, the young New York internist found Leonard’s patient to be in good physical health with only slightly elevated blood pressure, which—he agreed with Bill’s assessment—could be due to the stress of a career in the stock market. Bill was only thirty-five at the time, so apparently his youth and stamina were still warding off any serious physical effects of alcoholism, although they were right around the corner. But on this particular day, he was told by this particular doctor there was no reason why with a little “willpower” he couldn’t drink in “moderation.”
Bill left that Manhattan medical office with little regard for the young physician except he now had the words “willpower” and “moderation” implanted firmly in his alcoholic brain. And when Dr. Strong received the results of his brother-in-law’s physical examination, he had no reason to believe he needed to see a specialist such as Dr. Silkworth—at least not yet. But he kept the thought in the back of his mind.
As fall approached, the stock market began to gyrate a bit more than usual. Lois began reading predictions in the newspapers that the bubble was about to burst, that investors should take their profits and run. On those weekends when Bill was “drying out,” she would ask him about these dire forecasts. He told her the best minds in the business said the market and their stocks in particular still had a long way to go, especially Penick & Ford.
Penick & Ford was a small molasses business that had merged with a large corn products company. After one of his inside inspections, Bill felt it was an “undiscovered jewel” and began buying it on margin. It was now the largest holding in his portfolio. He even persuaded Leonard and several close friends and associates to take positions in the stock although, like Leonard, most of them never bought anything on margin. They felt it was too risky, especially in such a speculative bull market.
But not Bill. He had started buying Penick & Ford on margin in the spring of 1929 at around $35 a share. By early October, it was close to $60. Even on October 23, when the market dropped significantly in the last hour of trading, and the next day, when over thirteen million shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange, Bill hung on. And he was right—for two days, anyway. Penick & Ford dropped to $42 a share but had quickly risen back over $50. He sat in his favorite speakeasy and congratulated himself for being so smart and gutsy.
Like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Twin Towers tragedy in New York City on September 11, 2001, almost everyone remembered where they were on October 29, 1929, when the stock market crashed.
Lois had spent the morning with her mother at the hospital. Matilda was undergoing a series of tests for severe pains in her abdomen. Her daughter kissed her good-bye and returned home early that afternoon. It was some time around two o’clock, just an hour before the stock market closed. She turned on the radio and heard the news announcer shouting into his microphone, “The stock market is falling like an avalanche, like a plane crashing to earth. Even the wisest sages on Wall Street can’t explain such a catastrophe or just where the bottom might be. There’s not only complete pandemonium in the financial markets, it’s sheer panic.”13
Lois stood staring at the radio on the living-room table. Everything she feared could happen was happening. But it wasn’t until the first report of someone leaping from a building in the Wall Street area that the impact of it all suddenly hit her. She ran to the telephone and called Bill. He wasn’t in his office. Her suspicions were correct. He was in a Wall Street speakeasy with his drunken cronies trying to figure out what happened so quickly, so unexplainably, so disastrously.14 Not only had the bubble burst, but the sudden and severe disruption in the financial markets would soon lead to America’s Great Depression, which lasted through most of the 1930s.
This severe economic dislocation was caused not just by the stock market crash of 1929, but also by the failure of the nation’s banks to meet the withdrawal demands of frightened depositors. Many had to close their doors due to the lack of liquidity. The Federal Reserve Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission were created a few years later to prevent just such financial catastrophes from occurring in the future.
That Monday morning when Bill Wilson walked into Tobey & Kirk, his prize investment, Penick & Ford, had risen to $55 a share. He was a happy man. But by noon, it was $45. By one o’clock, the company shares had made a sickening dive to $32. By the time the stock ticker stopped ticking, they were in the low $20s. He was on margin and he couldn’t cover. The tremendous tumble in the market had also wiped out whatever equity he had in his other stocks. By three o’clock on October 29, 1929, Lois and Bill Wilson were broke.
Bill didn’t come home that night. Lois paced the rooms of their apartment until she was so exhausted she sat on the couch and dozed. Every little noise awakened her with a start. By eight in the morning, she decided to phone the police. There was no William G. Wilson listed in the “accident reports.” She waited until after ten before calling his office. When told he wasn’t there, she nervously asked to speak with Frank Shaw.
Lois waited several minutes before Frank came to the phone. He was polite and discreet. He had no idea where her husband might be although his voice hinted she might scour the city’s speakeasies. Before hanging up, the husband of her once dearest friend dealt her one more blow. It wasn’t his intention to hurt her. He simply had to be honest. Frank said the partners at Tobey & Kirk had forced his hand. He had no other choice but to let Bill go.
She turned on the radio, then quickly shut it off as news announcers continued their gruesome reports of the many now-broke wealthy investors who had plummeted to their death from tall buildings.15
It was early that evening when Randolph dragged her husband into their apartment. His jacket and pants were torn, there was a cut on his face, and he was in the worst condition she had ever witnessed. Randolph suggested Lois watch him closely and if he began to sweat and shake very badly, she might want to call a doctor. She sat next to her husband on the bed all night, bathing his face with cold towels, wiping off the saliva drooling from his mouth, calming him each time he shuddered and shouted in his delirium. It was almost dawn before he fell into a deep sleep. Lois lay down next to him, and when her mind finally grew too weary to think anymore, she herself drifted off.16
Late that afternoon, Bill came quietly into the living room where Lois was again staring out the window. Trying to hide his trembling hands, Bill assured his wife he would pull himself together and start all over again. He forced himself as best he could to sound confident and determined. He said he wouldn’t make any more empty promises about his drinking, but he wanted her to know this absolute disaster had finally taught him the lesson he needed to learn—that booze had ruined his life. He no longer had any doubts about that. Even one drink at this point was one drink too many. This time he’d climb on that water wagon and stay there.
All Lois could do was hug him and try to believe in him one more time. After all, she still loved her husband deeply, and in the face of such a calamity, wouldn’t any reasonable, rational, intelligent person—and Bill was certainly all of these—finally make the same decision he just did? Maybe in the face of doom, there was finally a little ray of hope.17
Bill began dropping by various Wall Street firms hoping to find a spot, but even former associates he had made a lot of money for in the past wouldn’t give him the time of day. Not only were most of these companies quickly retrenching following the crash, but Bill’s reputation always preceded him. Although he was known for his experienced analytical skills and ability to make money, no one was willing to take a chance on a “booze hound”—at least not in those trying times.
Over dinner one night, Lois said she had come across some letters from old friends they had met in Canada on their trip there a few years before. She wondered if things were as bad in Canada as they were here in the United States.
It was as if she had suddenly turned on a bright light. Bill’s face lit up. Why hadn’t he thought of that himself? No, things were still going great in Canada, especially in Toronto and Montreal and, as Lois said, he still had some good friends there. He gave his wife a big hug and kiss, then hurried into the den to shoot off a note to one of those good friends—Dick Johnson, who ran Greenshields and Company, a medium-sized brokerage firm in Montreal. He and Dick had done business in the past and several deals had proved quite lucrative for all concerned.
By the middle of November, he had received a wire from Dick Johnson telling him Greenshields would love to have him on board and to come to Montreal as soon as it was feasible. It appeared to be a golden opportunity, and Lois was overjoyed that she had played a small role in making it happen. So they sublet their apartment, put their furniture into storage, and set off for Canada where Bill was going to prove that he had weathered the storm and was on his way again. Lois’s hopes began to soar and she simply refused this time to listen to those nagging butterflies in her stomach.
The day after they arrived in Montreal, Lois found a small but comfortable furnished apartment on Gerard Street. Bill immediately began networking with a number of old contacts he had around the city and its environs—brokers, analysts, corporate financial and investment officers. It started to pay dividends even sooner than he could have possibly imagined.
He met a charming young English playboy named Harry Bates whose family had substantial mining interests in Canada. He and Bill hit it right off. Before long, Harry became a significant client and introduced Bill to a number of his wealthy friends. Dick Johnson and Greenshields were more than pleased to see the newest member of the firm fast becoming one of its biggest producers.
By the late spring of 1930, Lois and Bill had moved into an expensive apartment in Glen Eagle, high on a bluff overlooking the city of Montreal, and had their furniture shipped in from New York. They had also joined Harry Bates’s elegant country club, where Bill fell in love with the game of golf.
“It was simply wonderful,” Lois recalled, “but it was all happening much too fast like it did once before in our lives. The truth was, I wasn’t overly concerned because Bill was staying sober. He seemed absolutely committed and determined to make a success out of this new God-given opportunity.”18
But the disease of alcoholism is cunning, baffling, and powerful. It can lie dormant for a while and then suddenly erupt for no real reason and when least expected.
This time it began one lovely evening in June at their country club. Lois and Bill were having dinner with Harry Bates and his latest flame. The waiter handed the English playboy the wine list. He asked Lois if she had any particular preference. She smiled and said she always deferred to connoisseurs like himself. He enjoyed the flattery. When the expensive bottle of French wine Harry selected arrived at their table, he refused to accept Bill’s flimsy excuse for not having at least one glass. Bill glanced at Lois. He was sure she would understand he couldn’t possibly take the chance of offending his most important client. And after all, this time it really was only for business.
But Lois’s worst fears were not realized that night. In fact, the couples consumed two bottles of wine, had an excellent dinner, danced until almost midnight, and then went home. As they entered their apartment, Lois kissed her husband and told him how proud she was of his determination to change the course of his life and finally achieve the kind of success they had always dreamed about.
Before the end of the week, the French wine had convinced Bill he could once again be a social drinker, so he began nipping on his way to work. Then he began buying bottles of whiskey to stash in his desk at the office. Soon he had one hidden behind the bookcase in their apartment. When Lois discovered what was happening again, she became so hurt and overwrought she simply did not know what to do.
By late summer, Dick Johnson began a series of meetings with Bill in an attempt to save their relationship and his job with Greenshields and Company. He told his friend that while it was true he was making money for the firm, his partners were hearing too many stories about his drinking, his fights at the country club and even on the golf course, and upsetting incidents involving potential customers. But despite these warnings and more chances to reform, Bill just couldn’t stop his boozing.
It was late September when Lois received an ominous phone call from her sister Barbara. Their mother was back in the hospital for more tests, only this time the results were far from encouraging. Mrs. Burnham’s condition had earlier been diagnosed as a low-grade infection in the abdomen. Now it was feared she might have cancer, and she had already begun radiation treatments.
Even though Lois knew her husband’s job was in serious jeopardy, she felt she had to be with her mother, at least until she knew more about the seriousness of her condition. Bill said he understood and that she shouldn’t worry about him. Greenshields wasn’t the only firm in Canada that could use a good moneymaker like him. Lois could only shake her head. She left for Brooklyn Heights hoping and praying that he would somehow come to his senses before it was too late. The problem was, it already was too late.
While Canada had initially been spared the collapse that hit the U.S. stock market, it was only a matter of time before the ripple effect was to take its toll. It seemed that time coincided with Bill’s downward plunge again into alcoholism. With Greenshields now cutting back on its staff and Bill unable to curb his lifestyle, Dick Johnson had no other choice but to let him go.
With Lois back in Brooklyn, her husband began drinking around the clock. It was several weeks before he finally came off his binge. It was only then that he realized after working for ten months in Montreal, and after being connected with so many substantial investors and important firms there and in the United States, he had absolutely nothing to show for it. All he could do now was put their furniture into storage again, sublet their Glen Eagles apartment, and head back to New York.
Bill Wilson was not only broke once again but, between his margin losses in both countries, his unpaid rents, and his drinking bills, he was $60,000 in debt. He had to humble himself at Greenshields to borrow $500 against his World War I life insurance policy to pay for his transportation home.
Lois had been trying to reach Bill during his drinking binge. She was ready to head for Montreal when he finally returned her calls. At first he said he planned to stay there and find another position but she knew just by listening to him that it was hopeless. A few days before leaving Canada, he received the following note from his heartsick wife:
Come home to me. My heart is breaking. How can we go on like this day after day! What’s to become of us? I love you so, and yet my love doesn’t seem to do you any good. Still I have faith that it must, someday. God grant that day be soon, for it doesn’t seem as if I could go on like this, night after night, waiting for you hour after hour. Oh, that I had the wisdom to know what would help you, for I’m sure you could be helped if only I knew how. I’d do anything, dear, that would help you. I put faith in love, love, love—and patience. Oh, I hope I’ll have the patience to go through with it, for it seems each night as though I couldn’t stand another—and yet another comes, and still another, until my heart is like a stone. A great dullness spreads over me until all things, good and bad, seem to taste alike.
. . . God give me wisdom and strength and patience.19
It was snowing the day he arrived back in Brooklyn.