In the fall of 1982, the newly-formed Wolfe Street Foundation, founded in Little Rock by Joe McQuany, Gene Walter and Bert Jones, leased an ex-funeral home at 1210 Wolfe Street and opened it up for meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon.
Now more than 30 years later, the beloved but creaky old building on Wolfe Street has been sold to Children’s Hospital and retired. By providing meeting rooms, educational and prevention programs and just a place to go for those seeking recovery, it has, over the years, given thousands new hope and a new life.
The beauty of recovery reveals itself in many ways I discovered while attending meetings and hanging out at Wolfe Street. I remember the father taking his son to a movie, maybe for the first time, the young woman planning her wedding and a young married woman looking forward to starting her family.
I remember, too, the man whose business began to thrive, another who could retire in peace, and still another, devoted to his wife, who was celebrating 30 years of marriage. And I remember the woman who said Wolfe Street had saved her son’s life.
The old building on Wolfe Street did its job admirably, and the new Wolfe Street Center has taken its place at in a sturdy brick building nearly twice the size of the old one with more than an acre of lawn and parking spaces at 1015 Louisiana a few blocks away.
I want to tell you about the new Wolfe Street Center because I was there when the old one opened, and I served as president of the board in 1990 and 1991 (The late Gerald Cathey was the first president). The Sunday morning Hour of Power meeting probably saved my life.
Markey Ford, Wolfe Street’s dynamic executive director, gave me a tour of the new facility and hit the high points along the way.
The Foundation bought the 50-year-old building from the Heifer Foundation which used it for offices.
Aside from the meeting rooms, one of which holds 300, the building also has an old-timers’ coffee shop, a bookstore, a commercial kitchen, a chapel as well as rooms, outfitted with Murphy beds, to accommodate visiting speakers and other overnight guests.
There are also administrative offices for Markey and Amanda Parker, her assistant, and some of the many volunteers.
A major plus is the parking lot which has 49 spaces compared to the 20 at the old Wolfe Street site. In recent years the lack of parking on the site coupled with the dwindling availability of street parking, had become a problem which was beginning to affect attendance at the Wolfe Street meetings.
The new Center also has a physical connection to the past. The 12-foot long 28 wooden pews, each with a sponsor’s name, which accommodated thousands of visitors who had come to hear Joe’s lessons on the Twelve Steps at the old location are being put to use in a variety of ways in the new facility. So are the hundred-year-old chandeliers and the stained glass windows.
The inspiration for the accommodation of overnight visitors at the Wolfe Street Center came to Markey after a visit to Bill Wilson’s birthplace in East Dorsett, Vermont, a mile from where Bill W. and his wife, Lois, are buried. Placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1995, Wilson House hosts local AA and Al Anon meetings and a number of seminars.
Wolfe Street has several events a year including Mary Pearl’s seminars on relationships, and the Foundation would like to do more, but is limited by the lack of suitable accommodations for out-of-town visitors.
“In my conversations with the people at Wilson House,” Markey says, “they said providing on-site rooms was essential and would provide additional income.”
During my tenure as president, the building—its roof, sloping floors, bad plumbing and other physical ailments—seemed to occupy most of the board’s time, except that is for the proposed ban on smoking and developing policies regarding child care while parents were attending meetings.
Addressing the details of all these issues became almost impossible, and we created the position of executive director to look after things and raise money, the position that Markey holds today with such distinction.
The late Dr. Don Browning succeeded me as president of Wolfe Street, and it was he who planted the seeds of expansion that year when he said, “The Wolfe Street Center is dear to my heart as it is for many others in the Little Rock recovery community. What started as an idea 10 years ago has grown to be a revered meeting place for those in recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction.
“As the Center has grown, so too has the attitude of society toward accepting alcoholism as a disease. Society is more accepting of those people in recovery. Now the attention of the Wolfe Street Foundation board has to be turned to prepare for the expanding future of this wonderful legacy. As the people in recovery flood in, we need more space to accommodate them. When anyone needs help, we want to be able to respond.”
So now, more than 20 year later, Wolfe Street is responding to a growing need. Still, the new facility retains its strong spiritual foundations.
A board member in the early days wrote, “Resurrection, renaissance, recovery—whichever or all—it began for me at the Wolfe Street Center. The building—and the disease and the concept of humanity—that I had hated with a visceral fury are gone, replaced by a love and spiritual bond that cannot be readily explained to anyone who has not tasted the agony of chemical addiction and the gift of a second chance at life. The Wolfe Street Center is to me, then, not so much a building as a concept, an attitude, an ethic, a way of life. It is a method of living, and a source of peace, at long last.”
McQuany, who, at that time, was well on his way to becoming a world famous authority on alcoholism and recovery, once observed, referring to the building’s former use as a funeral home, that the current use also had to do with the transition “from death to resurrection.”
He also underscored the utility of the former “drains” in one of the funeral home rooms which had been converted to a coatroom for use on rainy days.
At one time, the building had also been used as a nurses’ residence for Baptist Medical Systems giving rise to further comparisons relating to healing.
It doesn’t really matter where Wolfe Street is. Thousands of visitors will still come, hoping to find a measure of peace and serenity. As in the past, many will find what they are looking for. Others, tragically, will not. Most will never be the same.
