fyi ... something on topic

Dry, not dried up:Temperance movement stays alive . . . barely
July 23, 2001 Monday
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Waukesha -- I was, frankly, expecting someone more akin to Carrie
Nation, the ax-wielding woman who smashed up saloons a hundred years
ago in protest of the evils of
alcohol.

Helen V. Krueger is no Carrie Nation.

Not even close.

Krueger is the president and backbone of the Waukesha chapter of the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which she founded 35 years ago.

At 82 -- "I'm a young 82," she says -- Krueger is soft-spoken, sweet.
And tolerant, apparently, of adults who imbibe. I know, because I
confessed to having enjoyed a glass of red
wine with my spaghetti dinner the night before, and she didn't pull
out an ax. Some of her closest family and friends will have an
occasional drink, she revealed.

"I love them and they love me."

Her mission, she says, is not to sit and argue futilely. Certainly
not with adults who drink, though she'll point out, "Only users
become abusers."

Instead, she hopes to reach children -- to educate them about the
harmful effects of alcohol and to encourage them that they don't have
to drink or smoke, even if they see their
parents and others do so. Now who can argue with a message like that?

The problem, of course, is that the scales are tipped with loads of
messages suggesting just the opposite, giving little chance to a
slight, white-haired woman like Helen Krueger
and her scarce number of fellow WCTU-ers.

 From out of the past

You thought the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was a thing of the
distant, Prohibition-era past? So did I.

Most people do, as a matter of fact, says Judy Thillemann, 54, of
Delavan, president of both the state temperance organization and the
Milwaukee Metro chapter, which covers
southeastern Wisconsin.

"Everybody says, 'I thought you were dead,' " she said. But
Thillemann claims to have at least 60 and maybe 100 members statewide
in six WCTU unions. When Helen Krueger
and her twin sister, Hazel V. Selbo of Cedarburg, lived in Milwaukee,
joining while their mother was still an active WCTU member, there
were quite a few chapters.

But there's no delicate way to put it. Most of the members are
getting up there.

"People keep dying off," said Krueger, less delicately.

Before Krueger called the sparsely attended monthly union meeting to
order in the Salvation Army's Waukesha headquarters last Monday,
there was a "fru- esta" -- the fruit juice
and cookies break.

"We're not like the white-water canoeists who go with the flow," she
said. They are, in fact, fighting the tide. "We're going onward," she
said. Then the small, uneven voices of the
seven around the table joined in an a capella verse of "Onward
Christian Soldiers/Women."

On this day, the meeting included five WCTU members from Waukesha,
Ozaukee and Walworth counties, one spouse and two guests. Average
age? Somewhere north of 70.
Krueger explained that there are 13 dues-paying members of the
Waukesha County group, officially called the Willard Iota Sigma
chapter. Neighboring counties don't have
sufficient members, so they attend in Waukesha.

A pledge and six bucks

"If you can get five members, you've got a union," she said. "It's
easy to join. Sign the pledge (for total abstinence), pay $6 and
you're a member." You don't even have to attend the
meetings.

Don't think that Krueger is discouraged.

"There's a stigma attached to the WCTU. You know that," she said. But
Krueger isn't bothered by ridicule, and she's determined.

"We haven't been that active, but I have decided if we don't do
something, we're either going to die or we're going to go forward."

Krueger showed up at a recent meeting of a task force considering
whether to continue county funding of DARE, the Drug Abuse Resistance
Education program, and urged that
the funding continue. She's spoken before a Waukesha city committee
considering how to control drinking in parks. She visited Soberfest,
a recent effort to promote non-alcoholic
festivals in downtown Waukesha, and liked what she saw.

The WCTU holds annual coloring and poster contests for children and
put out a calendar to further the cause, though honestly, I've never
seen the results outside of Monday's
meeting. Members attend conventions and set up booths at fairs,
festivals, Christian concerts, teachers' conventions and even malls,
handing out literature, posters and
bookmarks. Well, I've never seen those results, either.

They invite speakers to their meetings -- a DARE officer came this
day, greeted by a lot of head-nodding -- and they contribute to
efforts like a Christian teen center in Waukesha.

Printing and booths and travel cost money. Both the Milwaukee and
Waukesha WCTU chapters have it, a lot more than you'd think. Krueger
said the local chapter has "a couple
thousand" in the bank. The Milwaukee Metro chapter is darned right
flush with money, having benefited from a $100,000 bequest made 15
years ago and invested, according to
Krueger.

The Milwaukee Metro chapter, of which Krueger, Selbo and Thillemann
are members, is required to spend half of the donation's interest
earnings on spreading the WCTU word.

"As long as we have it, we might as well use it," said Krueger.

Even when darned few are listening.

Copyright 2001 Journal Sentinel Inc.
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