LOCAL

NEWS Susan B. Anthony III Helps Alcoholics

By Lynn Haessly

"I burned out as a young feminist." The words sound familiar, but the speaker is Susan B. Anthony III. She adds, "...in the 1940s".

"Who can say how many young feminists were lost in the 1940s, 50s, 60s to the disease of alcoholism?" she asked a Cleveland State University audience recently. She's a recovering alcoholic who has been sober 35 years, and she's traveled 500,000 miles spreading her message about women and alcohol.

"I can't blame my alcoholism on my Anthony heritage as I can my feminism," she said, referring to her famous "Aunt Susan,” whose image she wears on a silver coin on a chain around her neck. Indeed, when the folks at the Mint decided to put a woman. on a coin, the first one they thought of was Susan B. Anthony-the dedicated, single-minded feminist who criss-crossed the nation with a different message but with the same family dedication.

Dr. Anthony, who holds a doctorate in theology, stressed that women's alcoholism problems differ from men's.

"When a woman client is to the point where she might accept residential treatment, then the big question comes that men ņever have to face: 'What do 1 do with the children?""

As with so many other programs cut under the Reagan administration, cuts in federal alcohol programs affect women as much or more than men. Before the Reagan cuts, there were only six alcoholism centers in the nation where women could have their children with them, she said. By September, all federally-funded alcoholism programs will end.

Dr. Anthony, who understands the anguish of alcoholism, expressed sadness at the increasing numbers of alcoholic women. Thirty-five years ago, when she was still drinking, women were one in every 10 or 20 alcoholics. Now they number 10 million, half of all American alcoholics.

Other problems women alcoholics face include worry over pregnancy or VD during a drinking binge, fear of rape while leaving bars and the stigma of being considered sexually loose. A woman loose enough to lose herself to drink, so the popular feeling

goes, must be loose sexually, too. "How can I go into an AA meeting? I will be considered a whore," a Maine woman once confided in her.

Despite that woman's fear, Dr. Anthony believes in the value of AA. "The ambience of an AA meeting is a new society. People go to get a dose of the self and the society they would like to live in. They are their best selves there."

There's a common thread between Dr. Anthony's alcoholism, her study of theology (she has a doctorate in it) and her Anthony heritage: mysticism. "The drunken consciousness is really a search for mystic consciousness," she said. "We're misplaced mystics."

After she began her recovery from alcoholism, she studied theology, specializing in prayer and mysticism. She spent nine months at a Roman Catholic convent five years ago. "Aunt Susan's feminism comes from the Society of Friends-the American brand of mystics," she claimed. "The absolute grounding in the Society of Friends was in hope."

As a young woman, Dr. Anthony worked as a

reporter and had written two feminist books before having her own daily radio show in New York City, "This Woman's World." "All this hard, hard work was combined with hard, hard play," she said. “I'd tell these women how to live right, often in a raspy alcoholic baritone. Then I'd go out and close down the bars of Greenwich Village at 4 a.m. "This hypocrisy of being the uptown commentator and the downtown drunk went on," she said, until one day she decided to do a show about alcoholics.

That proved to be a turning point for her. She poured out her worries to a recovering male alcoholic who appeared on the show and asked him, "Do you think I'm an alcoholic?"

"Only you can answer that," he replied. Later she asked him for help to recover. He said a woman would be better able to help her. "Men help men and women can help women," he said.

Since she has recovered, with the help of several women, Dr. Anthony has spent her time professionally working with alcoholics, especially other

women.

Ladies Against Women Prim

By Pat Randle

Tongue-in-chicly attired in pillbox hats, '50s dresses, high-heeled pumps and white gloves, Ladies Against Women took to the sidewalks in front of the City Club to show their "support" for antifeminist activist Phyllis Schlafly.

Downtown lunchgoers, most laughing, paused to watch as over 75 women and a sprinkling of men chanted, "Warfare, not welfare," "My home is his castle," and other slogans inspired by Mrs. Schlafly's public statements.

In addition to the nifty '50s attire, some women sported pillowed tummies for that "proud to be pregnant" look. Many toted signs with phrases ranging from "Protect the rights of the unconceived, sperm are people too,," and "You're nobody till you're Mrs. Somebody," to "God gave us The Bomb," the

Judge Jails Mother of Four

On October 23, 1981, Barbara Thombs, a 22-yearold divorced welfare mother with four children, went to a food store near her home at 10:15 p.m., asking a neighbor to look in on her sleeping children while she was gone. A 3-month-old pit bull puppy which she was keeping for a friend was put in the kitchen with a board across the door to keep the puppy away from the children.

After buying her food, Barbara called her mother from a pay phone since she could not afford one on her welfare allotment. When she returned home approximately an hour after she left, she found her back door ajar, the board removed from the kitchen door, and her children gone. A neighbor told her the children had been taken to the hospital, and drove her there.

At the hospital, Barbara discovered that the puppy had come into the children's bedroom and scratched three of them, biting her 4-year-old daughter on the hand. The hospital had called the police who arrested Barbara on the spot on a charge of child endangering and took her to jail. She was incarcerated for a week before she could make bail. Her children have been in foster homes since that October night.

While Barbara was in jail, her mother filed in for her at the bar where she worked part-time: One-night

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just after closing time, a gunman forced his way in and shot Barbara's mother, who is now permanently paralyzed from the neck down. This fact was not known to the jury, since it was irrelevant to the charge.

On February 4, 1982, after a 4-day trial, Barbara was convicted of child endangering with substantial harm, a felony, because of her daughter's bite wound, and of two counts of misdemeanor child endangering relating to the scratches on the other two children. Judge Fred Guzzo, although aware that Barbara was the primary care-taker for her mother as well as her children, immediately sentenced her to 6 months to 5 years on the felony, and 6 months on each misdemeanor, to run concurrently. He refused bond pending appeal. Barbara, sobbing, was taken straight back to jail, and sent to Marysville a week later.

A motion for bond pending appeal was recently denied by the Court of Appeals, and Barbara's attorney plans to file a motion for shock probation as soon as the necessary 30 days elapse. In the meantime, the Juvenile Court has custody of Barbara's children, and she stands a good chance of losing them forever.

latter a direct quote from Mrs. Schlafly.

"I read about it and I had to come," said Ev Janish of Cleveland Women Working. "My husband told me to protect my image," said

“They liked her. porters. I think.”

They're her sup-

folksinger Gusti, explaining her mouton coat, pillbox hat and "high heels so my feet will hurt."

"It was great. I had a wonderful time," she added as she left to join an "anti-lunch" at Pat Joyce's Tavern.

Inside the City Club, Schlafly gave a standard speech, warning that equal rights for women would lead to women performing combat roles in the armed forces and create a less effective military. She explained away the high differential in men's and women's wages as a natural consequence of "the career choices women make."

Some of her remarks drew mild applause, while others brought mock gasps of horror and bursts of laughter from the sell-out crowd.

But the first hearty response from the audience came when the first questioner asked Mrs. Schlafly why she travels across the country advocating her antifeminist viewpoint rather than staying home and enjoying "the idyllic life you describe.'

""

During the entire 30-minute question and answer period, only one question supporting Mrs. Schlafly's contentions was asked. The remainder of the questioners, both men and women, expressed skepticism, if not downright disagreement with Mrs. Schlafly's viewpoints.

Just before the speech, as Mrs. Schlafly lunched with editors and other local luminaries, a group of Ladies Against Women members crowded outside the door closest to her table. After convincing a City Club employee to allow them to capture Mrs. Schlafly's attention, the group waved and sang "We love you, Phyllis" as a pert Mrs. Schlafly waved back.

"Who were they?" a City Clubber asked the employee as the Ladies disappeared down the hallway. "Some of those women who were protesting downstairs?"

"Oh, no. They liked her," the employee replied. "They're her supporters. I think.'