# Who was Lois W., and what did she do in A.A.'s beginning?

**In short:**
- Lois W. was Lois Burnham of Brooklyn, who married Bill W. on January 24, 1918 (P-53, 2017), stayed with him through his drinking, and died on October 5, 1988 (*Pass It On*, 1984, a later printing's chronology). The Big Book never names her: in "Bill's Story" (1939) she is "my wife," who worked in a department store while he drank (p. 4).
- In A.A.'s first years she supported the household and opened her home to alcoholics. "My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics" ([p. 15](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-15/)); from the fall of 1935 the first New York meetings were held in their Brooklyn parlor (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957).
- She and Anne Smith, in Akron, urged the Twelve Steps on alcoholics' wives and husbands from the start. Bill writes that "Anne, Lois, and Katie long ago planted the ideas" that grew into the Al-Anon Family Groups (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). Our sources don't say in so many words that she founded Al-Anon.
- At St. Louis in 1955 she spoke at the closing session, for the families (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). Bill called her "the one who held steadfast when hope had gone" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957).

## In the Big Book (1939)

"Bill's Story" ([pp. 1–16](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-1/)) never gives her name, but she is in almost every page of it. The young couple saved $1,000 and toured factories on a motorcycle together ([p. 2](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-2/)). After the 1929 crash they went to live with "my wife's parents" ([p. 4](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-4/)). "My wife began to work in a department store, coming home exhausted to find me drunk." ([p. 4](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-4/)). He stole "from my wife's slender purse" ([p. 6](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-6/)) in the worst of it. At the end of the chapter it is the two of them who take up the work: "My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems." ([p. 15](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-15/)).

That is the 1939 text's whole picture of her: the wife who held on, and then a partner in the work. Chapter 8, "To Wives," is written in the voice of members' wives, but the Big Book doesn't say who wrote it; the histories say Bill did, and that Lois wasn't asked (see below). See: *Who wrote the Big Book's chapters, including "To Wives"?*

## The facts of her life

- **Marriage.** P-53 (© 2017) gives it in one line: "Bill married Lois Burnham of Brooklyn, N.Y., on January 24, 1918, shortly before leaving for active duty." (P-53, 2017). *Pass It On* (1984) says the wedding had been set for February 1 and was moved up because Bill might be shipped overseas (*Pass It On*, 1984). In his 1955 talk Bill puts it as "Then along came Lois, and I was suddenly alive again" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957).
- **The drinking years.** P-53 says that by 1931 the drinking was a serious problem, "Despite Lois's efforts and the many promises and pledges to stop drinking made to her" (P-53, 2017). In 1934 she was the one who heard Dr. Silkworth's verdict at Towns Hospital; Bill tells of her protesting that he had "a tremendous amount of will power" and asking why he couldn't stop (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). The morning after the Armistice Day relapse she found him unconscious in the areaway of their house (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). *Pass It On* gives her salary at Macy's in 1933, $22.50 a week plus commission (*Pass It On*, 1984).
- **Her death.** The chronology added to our reprint of *A.A. Comes of Age* records her death on October 5 (*A.A. Comes of Age*, later reprint), and the chronology in *Pass It On* dates it October 5, 1988 (*Pass It On*, 1984, a later printing). Bill died on their 53rd wedding anniversary, January 24, 1971 (*Pass It On*, 1984).

## What she did in the first years (Bill's account, 1955–57)

Bill's own history of A.A. names her again and again, mostly as the one who kept them housed and fed:

- **The breadwinner.** In 1935, after Bill's spiritual experience, "Lois meanwhile was still working in the department store" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). In 1937, "Lois was still in the department store and her pay was just about all the money we had" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957), while several alcoholics lived with them, most paying no board.
- **The house at 182 Clinton Street.** When Bill came home from Akron in the fall of 1935, Lois "thought it would be wonderful if we filled the old family house in Clinton Street with alcoholics" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). It didn't work as hoped: Bill says they did not sober up a single one of the men who lived there, though they learned a great deal (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). They sometimes had five in the house at once, and one man left alone in it died by suicide (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). She and Bill learned from it that "if we permitted alcoholics to become too dependent on us they were apt to stay drunk" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). Meanwhile a weekly meeting took shape in their parlor that fall, the start of the New York group (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). At St. Louis "Lois recalled how for three years our Clinton Street home had been filled from cellar to garret with alcoholics of every description" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957).
- **Losing the house.** On May 1, 1939, just after the Big Book appeared and failed to sell, they had to leave the house that had belonged to her parents: the bank had taken it over and rented it to them for a nominal sum, and now it had found a buyer (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). P-44 has Bill's version: "She and I were dumped into the street and then onto the charity of A.A. friends." (P-44). A small fund was set up, the first money the Foundation had, called the "Lois W. Home Replacement Fund," and from it the trustees paid the couple $50 a month (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). They lived in a borrowed summer camp, then a winter with friends in Monsey, New York, then in a small room upstairs at A.A.'s first clubhouse on West 24th Street (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). Bill adds that he had persuaded her to quit her department-store job when the book's prospects looked brightest, and that by the summer of 1939 she had begun to wonder whether she should have kept it (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957).
- **Money and the marriage contract.** When Bill could not decide whether to take royalties from the book, Father Ed Dowling asked him, "But what about Lois?" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957), and reminded him he had promised to support her; Bill took the royalties. Years later he told the St. Louis convention that the royalties "have provided Lois and me with a home, where we have seen more than 3,000 of you over the years." (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). See: *Who was Father Ed Dowling, and why is he in A.A.'s story?*
- **Travels.** In 1950 the two made a six weeks' journey to A.A. groups abroad (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). *Pass It On* dates their first cross-country tour of the groups to 1943 (*Pass It On*, 1984).

## Lois and the family groups

This is what she is best remembered for, and the earliest source is careful about it.

In 1957 Bill writes that Katie, a Chicago member's wife, carried on "the precedent already set by Anne and Lois" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957), who in their homes, on their travels, and upstairs at the 24th Street club had urged A.A.'s Twelve Steps on nonalcoholic wives and husbands "as a way of restoring family life to normal" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). He says no one knows exactly when the first family group as such started, names Toronto, Long Beach and Richmond among the early ones, and ends: "it is sure that Anne, Lois, and Katie long ago planted the ideas which have since flowered into hundreds of Al-Anon Family Groups" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). A photo caption in the same book says the Smiths' house in Akron is where "Lois and Anne laid the groundwork of what would one day be called the Family Groups" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957).

*Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers* (1980) adds Lois's own memory of her first visit to Akron in the summer of 1935, at Anne Smith's invitation: "Anne was the person I related to as another wife of an alcoholic" (*Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers*, 1980). It dates Al-Anon's present form to 1951, "though 'family groups' composed of A.A. members' relatives had been developing over the preceding years" (*Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers*, 1980), and says Al-Anon and Alateen are "entirely separate from A.A." (*Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers*, 1980). The Big Book's own later note says the same: Al-Anon was formed about thirteen years after "To Wives" was written and is "entirely separate from Alcoholics Anonymous" ([p. 121](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-121/)).

*Pass It On* (1984) prints Lois's later account of her own turning point: one Sunday, when Bill said they'd be late for the Oxford Group meeting, she threw a shoe at him (*Pass It On*, 1984), and "That day, I began to look at myself analytically for the first time." (*Pass It On*, 1984). She came to see that she resented someone else having done what she couldn't, and "I was jealous of his newfound friends" (*Pass It On*, 1984).

None of our books says in plain words that Lois founded Al-Anon. What they show is her helping to plant the idea, carrying it into the early groups, and speaking for the Family Groups in 1955. See: *Is Al-Anon part of A.A.?*

## At St. Louis, 1955

At the convention's closing session Bill sat on the stage with his mother and with Lois, "the one who held steadfast when hope had gone, who had attended my second birth" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). Bernard Smith, chairman of the trustees, introduced her as "a symbol to all of us of the A.A. wife" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957).

Her talk, printed in full, speaks for the families. She thanks the members for "showing me personally, and all the other wives and husbands of A.A., the way to a better and a more useful life" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957), and describes the Family Groups as "a spontaneous response to a vital need" (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957): "We admit that we too are powerless over alcohol. We try to take our hands off your problems." (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). She gives the numbers: probably fewer than 100 Family Groups at the 1950 Cleveland convention, nearly 700 by 1955 (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). Earlier in the convention, Bill writes, Lois and other speakers told A.A.'s that the Family Groups had a world clearinghouse of their own and their own literature (*A.A. Comes of Age*, 1957). See: *What happened at the St. Louis convention in 1955?*

## Where the sources differ, or don't settle it
- **"To Wives."** *Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers* (1980) says Bill suggested Anne Smith write the chapter for wives; Lois "wasn't asked," and when she offered, Bill said it should be in the same style as the book (*Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers*, 1980). It quotes her decades later: "I've always been hurt by it" (*Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers*, 1980). Bill's own 1957 book doesn't mention this.
- **Who founded Al-Anon.** As above: the 1957 account credits Anne, Lois and Katie with planting the idea, and the 1980 book gives 1951 for Al-Anon's present form. Our sources hold nothing from Al-Anon itself; *Lois Remembers*, her own book, is published by Al-Anon and is only named in a source list (*Pass It On*, 1984).
- **Her death.** The year 1988 comes from a chronology in a later printing; the 1957 and 1984 texts were written while she was alive.

## Read it yourself
- Chapter 1, "Bill's Story" ([pp. 1–16](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-1/)), free from A.A.: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt1.pdf
- Chapter 8, "To Wives," with the Al-Anon note on [p. 121](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-121/): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt8.pdf
- P-53, *The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous*: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/literature/P-53_0725.pdf
- P-44, *A.A.'s Legacy of Service*: https://www.aa.org/aas-legacy-service
- *A.A. Comes of Age*, *Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers* and *Pass It On* are sold by A.A. World Services: https://onlineliterature.aa.org
- Related: *Who was Bill W.?* · *Who was Anne Smith, Dr. Bob's wife?* · *My husband (or wife) drinks. What does the Big Book say to do?*

## Sources
| Source | Pages | Date |
|---|---|---|
| *Alcoholics Anonymous*, Chapter 1, "Bill's Story" | 2, 4, 6, 15 | 1939 |
| *Alcoholics Anonymous*, Chapter 8, note | 121 | a later edition's note |
| P-53, biographical sketch of Bill W. | — | pamphlet © 2017 |
| P-44, *A.A.'s Legacy of Service* (Bill W.) | — | around 1955; pamphlet © 2018 |
| *A.A. Comes of Age* (Bill W.; Lois W.'s 1955 talk) | — | 1957 ( is a later reprint's chronology) |
| *Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers* | — | 1980 |
| *Pass It On* | — | 1984 ( chronology runs to 1988) |

Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). *A.A. Comes of Age*, *Pass It On* and *Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers* are cited by the file-page markers in our copies (f.), not printed pages.

*Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book, P-44, P-53,* A.A. Comes of Age, Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers *and* Pass It On *are © A.A. World Services, Inc.*