01/04/2026
Did you know that?????
...
On January 4, 1941
Bill and Lois Wilson drove to Bedford Hills, NY, to see Stepping Stones and broke in through an unlocked window.
Here's the rest of the story:
Stepping Stones is in Bedford Hills, NY. Bill and Lois lived there the last half of their life together, moving to this house on April 11, 1941. It is now a trust foundation, preserving the history, artifacts and papers of Bill and Lois.
Since Lois's father's death in 1936, Lois and Bill had been paying the mortgage company a small rental to stay on in the house on Clinton Street in Brooklyn. During the Great Depression, people were rarely forced from their homes, but in 1939, as the Depression eased, more money became available, and the mortgage company was able to sell the house.
On Wednesday, April 26, 1939, Lois and Bill had to leave the house that had been the Burnham family home for half a century. It was necessary not only to pack up their own belongings, but also those accumulated by her parents from 1888 on. They gave carloads of items to the Salvation Army and Goodwill Industries, and put some of their furniture into storage, including Lois's fine Mason and Hamlin grand piano which Bill had bought for $1,600 when they had lived in a luxurious apartment at 38 Livingston Street in Brooklyn. What a sad day it must have been. They now had no home and no income. Lois's diary entry for that day says only: Left 182 for good. Went to Parkhursts.
For the next two years they lived like vagabonds in about 50 different places, most of them homes of AA members. Someone once asked Bill how they had got through the next two years. Bill explained, probably with an ironic grin, that they were invited out to dinner a lot. When they finally found their new home they were living in a small room in the 24th Street Clubhouse.
In January of 1941 they were staying with friends in Chappaqua, New York. Lois wrote in her diary on January 4 that they had driven to Bedford Hills to see the house. They broke in through an unlocked window. They drove up again the next day to have another look.
This house was owned by a Mrs. Griffith (no relation to Bill), a rich philanthropist whose husband had died an active alcoholic, and whose best friend had found sobriety in an AA group in New Jersey. She clearly wanted the Wilsons to have this house and offered it to them for only $6,500, no money down, with mortgage payments of $40 a month. Since they would save the $20 a month storage bill, it became possible for them to get this house.
The Wilsons originally named their new home Bil-Los's Break, but because they had to use a shortcut of rugged stone steps down the steep hill to get to their garage, they changed the name to Stepping Stones. This also implied a connection with the Twelve Steps.
The house is a small, seven room, Dutch Colonial structure of dark brown shingles with gables sunk into a steep gambrel roof.
Up a hill in the woods is a small cement-block building which Bill and a friend built for him to use as a study. Bill named it Wit's End.
The Wilsons, Bill died January 24, 1971, the day of their 53rd wedding anniversary, and Lois died October 5, 1988 at the age of 97
Even Lois, because she was not an AA member, could not leave her money to AA, so she channeled some of it to the Stepping Stones Foundation. The Foundation's Mission Statement reads: To contribute to the knowledge and understanding of the disease of alcoholism and its effect on family and society and to preserve Stepping Stones, the home of Lois and Bill Wilson, and its historic archives for Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon members and those interested in alcoholism education and research. Exerts from an article by Nancy O.
