Losers in a Deadly Game Find a Way Out at Retreat House

Sipping a cup of coffee on the wide front porch of the Gratitude Retreat--a halfway house for sober male alcoholics on the outskirts of this city’s old downtown--Dick looked out across Cabrillo Avenue and remembered the boozy trail that had led him to that porch five months ago.

Years of steady drinking had robbed him of a career as a data processor. “The progression got worse and worse and I couldn’t pay my rent or work at anything,” Dick recalled. “My thoughts were of how I could get enough whiskey to drink myself dead in a day’s time.”

During the three months that he lived at Gratitude, Dick recalled, he became close friends with other men who were trying to put alcohol behind them and learned “that you can have fun in sobriety.”

Now a Security Guard

Today, the 47-year-old man lives in a residential hotel in the neighborhood, works as a security guard and is going to school to catch up on what has happened in the computer world so that he can go back to the business.

“It’s been six years,” he said.

While Dick was on the front porch with his memories, Kenny sat on a couch in a small vestibule leading to the living room, talking to some of the other men.

He got there the week before last.

“I lost most of my self-esteem, my wife, cars, houses and numerous good jobs,” said the 44-year-old one-time design engineer, adding that he walked into the halfway house carrying everything he owned.

Dick and Kenny are two of the 200 or so men who have lived at Gratitude Retreat in the two years it has been in Torrance, occupying a former hotel where, it is said, a man drank himself to death two months before it became a house for sober living.

Deadly Game

Dick’s is a story of success in a deadly game--beating the bottle--that more people lose than win.

Kenny, who has been in five other halfway houses in the past, hopes his story turns out that way, too.

“This is the best house I’ve ever been in--there’s an intimacy between the residents and staff--and I think I have the best chance to make it,” he said. “I was desolate, desperate and lonely, a tick away from killing myself or going to jail.”

And like many of its residents, the Gratitude Retreat Foundation--which strives to get its residents into jobs and onto the Alcoholics Anonymous program--has a checkered tale to tell about its own five-year existence: from birth to rejection, to near extinction, and finally to success. Alcoholism professionals say it is one of only two halfway houses for male alcoholics in the South Bay; the other is the long-established Beacon House in San Pedro.

Founded in 1981 by recovering alcoholics who wanted to help others grasp sobriety, the Gratitude Retreat Foundation operated a small halfway house in rented hotel rooms in El Segundo for two years. That ended in the fall of 1983 amid bad relations with the management and police contentions--denied by the foundation--that the house attracted crime.

An attempt to buy property in a Hawthorne neighborhood failed after some residents and business people protested that the halfway house would be an unsavory addition to the area and city officials refused to issue a special-use permit.

“It almost died out after Hawthorne,” said board member Jerry Guild. “We were disheartened.”

But instead, the foundation went on to find a two-story stucco hotel in Torrance that was on the market for $320,000--and did not require anything other than a business license to convert into a halfway house. A supporter made the $65,000 down payment and leased the building to Gratitude with an option to buy it.

$280,000 Loan

Just this July, the foundation obtained a $280,000 loan from Security Pacific National Bank, which allowed it to exercise that option.

And a month later, the South Bay Hospital District, a foundation providing money for health programs, gave Gratitude Retreat a $50,000 grant. It cited Gratitude for returning men to “the mainstream of society and (for) its great success in developing a strong basis of volunteer support for the program.”

Although Security Bank officer Deborah Venable, a former foundation board member, helped with the loan, she said approving it was a business decision made by the commercial real estate department based on the financial condition of the foundation and its service to the community.

“It is highly thought of in Torrance and is for the good of the community,” she said. “Security was very interested in being a part of that progressive thought and helping out Gratitude so they could continue to function.”

Directors Impressed

Philip Valera, executive director of the hospital district, said district directors were impressed by the self-help concept of Gratitude Retreat and its ability to attract support from about 800 people in the South Bay who donate money or work with residents to help them maintain sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Valera said the main focus of the halfway house is people helping each other recover from alcoholism with the support of others who have recovered. “The men are in large part paying their own way and a very central element is self-reliance,” he said.

Foundation board member and former house director Dick Price said the loan and the grant recognize that “a lot of people are getting help” at Gratitude Retreat.

“We’re getting told we’re on the right track,” he said.

Frank Priest, a foundation leader, put it this way: “This is a local commitment to what is going on about drug abuse. People say, why isn’t anything done? It is.”

60 Keep in Touch

Of the 200 men who have been through the halfway house since 1984, 60 still keep in touch and are known to be sober and active in Alcoholics Anonymous, said board member Robin Doyno, adding that many others may well be sober, too. “We don’t do follow-ups,” he said.

Nearly half of the men who come to Gratitude are in their 30s and most are referred from detoxification centers or hospitals, according to the foundation. Some have no job skills, while others have been aerospace workers, carpenters, cooks and dentists. When they arrive at the halfway house, according to a foundation brochure, their alternatives are “living in the streets, the back seat of a car or a particularly destructive home environment.”

South Bay alcoholism professionals give the foundation strong endorsements, and their only criticism is that there are not more such places.

Pete Rambo, director of the Wayback Inn, a detoxification center in Hawthorne, said that between them, Gratitude and Beacon House provide only about 40 beds for alcoholic men who need places to go after leaving detoxification centers or hospitals. He said the South Bay could use 150 beds.

‘Facilities Always Full’

“A lot of people fall through the cracks,” he said. “Facilities are always full.”

Betty Batenberg, director of the South Bay Council on Alcoholism, said the halfway house provides excellent services, puts people back into the work force and “follows the traditions and principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, by far the most successful program” for alcoholics.

Torrance officials say that the halfway house has generated very few neighborhood complaints, although the police say some men were arrested on minor warrants while living in the house. Police spokesman Ron Traber said Gratitude “is not a problem for us.”

Foundation leaders say some neighbors have come over to get acquainted, even donating food. “Once people find out the truth about what’s going on, they’re always supportive,” Priest said.

‘Safe Environment’

Mike Olson, a Gratitude resident two years ago and now assistant manager, described the house as a “clean, sober, safe environment” for people who, only a short time earlier, were drinking alcoholically--frequently without jobs and living on the streets.

“When I came here, I was real frustrated with the outside world,” he said. “This is a place you can come to where people understand what is going on with you and can help you. The guys get into AA, get a foundation of sobriety, and gain employment.”

During their 90-day stay at Gratitude, men are required to remain drug and alcohol free, regularly attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and hold down jobs or make a serious effort to find work. Of the 20 men that can be housed at any one time, 59% stay for the full period, according to the foundation. The others leave, either because they drink or use drugs or break other house rules.

Residents pay $100 a week in rent, or work it off by doing maintenance chores around the house, according to foundation leaders, who say there never is a need to call a plumber or an electrician when something goes wrong. There usually are residents with those skills.

Good for Self-Esteem

Olson says the main reason for requiring men to work is that “when you get a job, your self-esteem shoots up.”

Directors say they want to maintain a homelike environment in the one-time hotel, which is beige stucco on the outside and extensively wood-paneled inside. Remodeling work, including carpentry, painting and wallpapering, has been done by residents.

The collection of mismatched furniture, ranging from a gold-colored sofa to a nubby easy chair in fall hues, has been dubbed “early recovery modern” by Price.

“Serendipity” is the word Price uses to describe the good fortune that seems always to have come along at just the right time.

‘Excellent Place’

After searching four months for a place after the Hawthorne rejection, the foundation learned from a friend that the old Hines Hotel was on the market. Said board member Guild, “When we saw the living room, kitchen and office, we said it was obvious this was an excellent place.”

The problem then became money to buy it, which was solved when a supporter put up the down payment.

Price said that last year, the foundation was having a “tough time financially,” until a wealthy businessman--who shares the same accountant as Gratitude--came through with $45,000.

Of the foundation’s total income of $138,000 for the 1985-86 fiscal year, more than $70,000 came from individual, corporate and foundation donors. The remainder was largely from resident fees and fund-raising dances that are held on a regular basis.

Fund-Raising Drives

Foundation leaders say that they are financially secure for a while, but all the same there will be a fall fund-raising drive and a campaign to go after more business and foundation support. “We still owe $250,000 on the mortgage,” Price said.

Plans call for an alcoholism education program and better organization of the alumni association of former residents, who are called FROGS, which stands for former residents of Gratitude.

The foundation also wants to replace a five-car garage with a new building to serve as a meeting hall and recreation and office space. This would permit more men to live in the house.

Some FROGS said that the worst thing about their stay at Gratitude was when someone they had gotten close to there didn’t make it and got drunk.

And the best thing was the camaraderie. Jake, who was at the halfway house more than a year ago, said it was a time of men coming from lonely and angry places forming bonds and helping each other.

Said Jake, who is now a painter at Hughes Aircraft, “We all had one thing in mind, to stay sober, and find out if we could live without alcohol.”