By Ames S.
The gracious Dutch colonial-style house called Stepping Stones, where Bill W., AA’s cofounder, lived with his wife, Lois, for the last 30 years of his life, has been considered a national landmark for the last six years. Visited by thousands of AA and Al-Anon members every year, the house is a monument to the interconnected fellowships and the couple who were instrumental in founding them.
Set on eight wooded acres in Katonah, New York, a sleepy Westchester community 46 miles north of midtown Manhattan, the house was purchased by the Wilsons in 1941. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004 and, more recently to the New York State Women’s Heritage Trail in recognition of Lois’s contributions to the self-help movement, Stepping Stones is filled with family heirlooms, personal memorabilia and an extensive archive.
“AA and Al-Anon are unquestionably among the greatest social movements of the 20th century,” Richard White-Smith, Director of Heritage New York, a program of the state’s Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation told the New York Times in July 2007. “So it’s a very important site.”
Operated as a museum and maintained to look as it did when Bill and Lois lived there, the recently renovated structure contains many artifacts that document the growth and development of AA, among them a letter to Bill from Dr. Carl Jung; a blessing from Pope Paul VI; and a photograph of Richard M. Nixon receiving the one millionth copy of the Big Book. In addition, Al-Anon was founded at Stepping Stones, in 1951 by Lois and her friend Anne B., and the northwest corner of the upstairs gallery is the site of the first Al-Anon office.
Stepping Stones was the Wilsons’ first and only real home. Nomadic for much of their early married life, they lived in a series of apartments in New York and elsewhere, often taking to the road as Lois tried to keep Bill away from alcohol. Eventually, they settled into the house where Lois had grown up as a child in Brooklyn, New York, at 182 Clinton Street. This, ultimately, is where much of AA’s history began -- where Ebby T. came to visit his old drinking buddy Bill to tell him that there was a spiritual solution to his drinking problem, where Bill finally got sober, and where many of the fellowship’s early AA meetings were held. In 1939, however, as AA was just starting a period of prodigious growth, the bank foreclosed on the house and the Wilsons were evicted. For the next few years they lived with relatives, friends, or in two tiny rooms at the back of the AA Clubhouse on Twenty-Fourth Street in Manhattan.
In April 1941, however, with the help of an acquaintance, a woman whose husband had died an active alcoholic and whose best friend had found sobriety in an AA group in New Jersey, Bill and Lois purchased Stepping Stones.
The house needed a lot of work, but after their many years on the move, they were more than willing to put in the time.
Currently, the house is owned and maintained by the Stepping Stones Foundation, a nonprofit organization established in 1979 by Lois to preserve the site and its contents, emphasize its educational value, and spread the Wilsons’ story. To this end, Stepping Stones is open for tours year-round, with virtual tours available online, and a host of other foundation activities that engage members of the AA and Al-Anon communities, as well as the local Katonah-Bedford Hills community.
One of the most popular events at Stepping Stones has always been Bill and Lois Wilson’s annual picnic tradition celebrating the family in recovery, an afternoon including tours of the house, an open meeting with AA and Al-Anon speakers, and, of course, a picnic. Held each year early in June, the picnic was started 59 years ago by Bill and Lois as a way of celebrating families that had been reunited and restored through recovery in AA and Al-Anon.
For AA visitors to Stepping Stones, one of the major attractions is the cinderblock studio called Wit's End that was built by Bill, with the help of a mason friend, a few hundred feet from the house itself. Many of Bill’s writings, including three of his four books, were written in this studio behind the main house.
Inside the studio is Bill’s desk, dotted with cigarette burns – a testament to Bill’s longstanding smoking habit. The desk originally belonged to Hank P., with whom Bill shared office space in New Jersey while the two tried to sell stock in Works Publishing and get the Big Book written. Bill wrote much of the Big Book sitting at this desk, which he kept through the years and finally gave a permanent home to at Wit’s End.
Beside the desk, on one wall of the studio, is a painting commonly known as “The Man on the Bed.” Originally titled “Came to Believe” by the artist Robert M., who gave it to Bill as a present, the painting depicts two early AAs carrying the message to a third man who is perched at the edge of his hospital bed, intent on the message of hope being delivered by his two visitors.
Another highlight of Stepping Stones is its beautiful and well-maintained garden, a favorite place for Lois and the bucolic setting for one of AA’s earliest informational videos, titled “Bill’s Own Story,” where Bill sits at a table in the garden narrating for the camera the events that brought him and Dr. Bob together and launched the AA Fellowship on its improbable journey.
Lois was the garden’s principal caretaker and in the years after her death in 1988 at the age of 97, the garden was underutilized. But in 2009, the Stepping Stones Foundation set up a community garden in cooperation with a group of local residents who jumped at the chance to revive the garden in the spirit of Lois and Bill. “We are a small neighborhood group in the village of Katonah who are grateful for having access to the Stepping Stones’ Garden, where we can grow healthy, organic vegetables,” said Michele Durivage, a Community Garden Member, in the 2009 Stepping Stones newsletter. “We see this as an opportunity to bring neighbors together, working cooperatively and setting an example for the rest of the community. It’s exciting to be a part of the new movement toward sustainability, and Stepping Stones’ garden offers us the space and location to bring the garden to life.”
While the house is visited by thousands of AA and Al-Anon members annually, Annah Perch, Executive Director of the Stepping Stones Foundation, notes that some people will never be able to get there. “We have to bring the legacy of Bill and Lois beyond Stepping Stones,” she adds. With that in mind, the Foundation has developed a traveling presentation titled “Bill and Lois Wilson and the AA Way of Life” that has been shown at conventions and gatherings across the country. A PowerPoint presentation, it brings together never-before-seen photos, archival material and audio recordings that help to create a picture of what the Wilsons were like and their life together.
Tim H., a sober alcoholic who has visited Stepping Stones, noted in a 2007 Seattle Times article, “If you’re sober in AA, you have this second life you never thought you’d have. It’s very moving to see the books and the people and the things of interest that went into making Bill and Lois who they were. It’s like learning about your Dad when he was a boy.”
Echoing this sentiment, Jean Z., an AA member from Long Island, said in a New York Times article, “This, to me, would be the equivalent of a Christian going to the Vatican.” Sober a couple of years, Jean remarked about Bill, “To think that he just sat at this desk, a simple man who had a problem and wanted to get better. It’s touched my heart and saved my life.”
In those sentiments, she is certainly not alone.