It’s a basic tenet and the 12th tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous that members not be identified by their full names. Many who have been helped, though, know the name Wanda.
The Marysville woman was two days short of her 80th birthday when she died Sept. 26.
Her obituary in The Herald said she had worked as a grocery checker, cook, waitress and bartender. “These jobs prepared her for what she would be best remembered for: the owner, manager, cook, etc. at Wanda’s Club 4 in Lynnwood,” it said.
Operating from 1984 to 1990, and from 1992 to 1994, Wanda’s Club 4 was a clean-and-sober dance club. It was located at 15709 Highway 99, now a used car and auto repair business.
At Wanda’s Club 4, there were snacks and soft drinks, deejays and sometimes live bands. It was an alcohol-free haven for people in recovery.
Wanda’s widower — friends in AA know him as “Ole” — is now 83. At his tidy Marysville home, he talked Monday about his life with Wanda, both before and after they achieved sobriety in the 1970s. He remembered Wanda’s Club 4 and the people it served.
And he expressed a hope that business people will step up to provide places where people can socialize while staying sober. He has written a short booklet about their effort, “The Rise and Fall of Wanda’s Club 4.”
“It was not anything fancy by any means. The parking lot wasn’t even paved,” Ole said. “We had some live music, but mostly disc jockeys. In a bar, a live orchestra wants to take a break. We wanted to keep our people up and dancing.”
Along with operating the Lynnwood club with Wanda, Ole was a partner in sober dance clubs in Seattle’s Fremont area and Tacoma. By the early 1990s, he said, “the disco scene had faded and they all closed down.”
There’s still a sober social scene at the Lynnwood Alano Club, which hosts Saturday night dances. Alano clubs are nonprofits associated with 12-step programs.
In his booklet, Ole acknowledges that being an AA member while running a sober dance club as a business drew criticism. He has come to believe that such a club — theirs welcomed both AA members and non-members — should be operated by someone not involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. “I want private business to get interested in doing business for recovering alcoholics,” he said.
Even so, he knows that through Wanda’s Club 4 he and his wife provided a much needed place.
“Hundreds of people, they give Club 4 and my other clubs credit for their sobriety,” he said. “A lot of people met their future wives there. It was such a safe atmosphere that people brought their children. There was a feeling of safety.”
He hasn’t forgotten the worst times. “Wanda and I were both recovering alcoholics,” he said.
They met at Norm’s Resort on Cottage Lake near Woodinville, and married in 1953. Ole had been drafted into the Army, but served only six months because his younger brother was killed.
He eventually had his own cement contracting business. He recalls hard-drinking years when he worked as a union cement finisher. “If we didn’t get a shift, we’d go to the old Labor Temple bar in Seattle’s Belltown,” he said.
“Alcoholism destroyed our marriage — a very sad thing,” he recalled. They divorced, he married another woman, but he and Wanda eventually reunited and remarried. Wanda, he said, was in a treatment center the second time he proposed.
Their drinking continued into the 1970s. Ole had tried getting sober before, but said “certain events brought me back to AA in 1976.”
“I’ve been sober ever since. Wanda got sober in ’77,” he said. Ole remembers that time of early recovery, when their three sons were young, as “our very best years.”
His entry into the sober club business “started as a fluke” after a Seattle Alano club closed. Someone had started sober dances at another place and asked him to help. That led to the partnerships in Fremont and Tacoma. “Then Wanda wanted a club. We put one together in Lynnwood,” he said.
“We had 200 people show up every Friday and Saturday night. Inpatient treatment centers bused their people to us,” Ole said. “We simply showed them that staying sober could be a lot of fun.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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