‘It’s Time’ for Her Story : Supervisor’s Wife Recalls Struggle With Alcoholism

Ever since her husband was named Orange County supervisor 14 years ago, Emma Jane Riley has wondered what would happen if people knew she was “powerless over alcohol.”

In those years, Riley, who took her last drink 25 years ago, has seen the public respond positively to Betty Ford, Joan Kennedy and, most recently, Kitty Dukakis as they revealed their victories over addictions to drugs or alcohol.

Though Riley has spoken out in general on alcoholism, and her situation “is not a secret” to friends, she remembers when it was “horrible” for problem drinkers who were married to prominent men. Back then, her husband, Thomas F. Riley, was toward the rank of brigadier general in the Marine Corps, which, unlike today, offered no alcoholism recovery programs.

“We were terrified of hurting our husbands’ careers,” Riley said. The wives covered up for one another, she said. “We all felt so helpless.”

One friend, a general’s wife in the last “full blown” stages of alcoholism, finally died in a hospital from alcohol-related problems. Another friend died at home after she broke her neck in a drunken fall. It was the first time Riley knew that alcoholism could be fatal.

Riley, silver-haired and stately, sat in her living room, behind her a view of Newport Beach’s Back Bay, across the room an oil portrait of her husband of 50 years as a handsome, young officer. Two cats wandered across the sofa and settled in her lap as she spoke openly, deciding to tell her story now, because “it’s time.”

She had started drinking to dull the physical pain of endometriosis, eventually becoming a “periodic alcoholic,” a binge drinker as opposed to a daily drinker, she said.

Even though her family did not think she had a “problem,” only that she drank too much on occasion, she became determined to quit drinking out of fear and pride--that anyone would see her at her worst.

She also had converted to the Catholic faith and was plagued by “over-scrupulousness of conscience.” In confession, when she told a priest she had had too many martinis, his advice--say two Hail Marys and don’t drink so much--didn’t help her quit.

She wanted to go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous while her husband was overseas, but her father, a retired banker who was living with them in Washington, forbade it, warning her that her husband’s career could be ruined.

“I really couldn’t tell you where I got the strength,” she said. “It was something I had to do, no matter what. . . . I went anyway.”

She discovered that the meeting was full of elected officials and bureaucrats, members of Congress and the State Department, and their spouses.

When her husband returned home, he was in “absolute and utter shock,” she said. He has never been fully comfortable with her continued active participation in Alcoholics Anonymous but tolerates it, she said--even when she has intervened with county workers who have had problems with alcohol or with alcoholic family members.

Thomas Riley became a supervisor in 1974, when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed him to fill a vacant supervisor’s post representing the south county. It was their first experience with civilian politics, and they approached it “naively,” as if they had received a military appointment, she said. “We blithely went ahead, traveling the county, meeting the people we were going to look after.”

Walking into Orange County politics, she felt like Alice in Wonderland. “We had no idea of the corruption.”

In 1976, Riley’s fellow supervisor, Robert Battin, was convicted of misusing his county-paid staff for his political campaign, while Santa Ana doctor and political kingmaker Louis Cella was indicted and later convicted for fraudulently obtaining the money he contributed to state and local campaigns. In 1979, another supervisor, Ralph Diedrich, was convicted of taking a bribe from a developer.

Emma Jane Riley said she was also surprised at the pettiness of other women in the community. She was hurt most, she said, by women who would tell her that she had gained weight, or that she should not wear expensive jewelry because of the low salaries supervisors make.

“I wondered if the problem of alcohol would be brought up again after all these years. . . . I didn’t know--I really didn’t--what people would say. I never stopped going to meetings.”

If they said anything, it didn’t seem to matter to the supervisor’s political career.

He won his first election with 64% of the vote in 1976 and the three thereafter.

Considered both gracious and sincere, his wife, meanwhile, was making a name for herself, helping spearhead programs for abused and battered children, homeless women and the mentally ill.

She has earned a two-page resume of community service, including awards from the Orange County chapter of Christians and Jews, the YWCA South Orange County and the Cystic Fibrosis Guild of Orange County.

She is one of two women in the county to receive the highest papal honor given a Catholic lay person--the Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta. Last year, she received another papal honor, membership in the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre, an organization that preserves Christian historic sites in the Holy Land.

Over the past three years she has spoken at state Sen. William Campbell’s Conference on Women, and belongs to the Women’s Auxiliary New Directions, a home for alcoholic women. She also is active with the National Council on Alcoholism and the Catholic Church’s Clergy Council on Alcoholism.

She has become so active that some people have suggested that she run for office herself, she said, although she has declined. Among other reasons, she said she suffers from emphysema and chronic bronchitis, and does not have the necessary stamina.

Despite continued revelations of drug and alcohol abuse by political wives, and the seeming acceptance by the public, Riley said the stigma remains. “They’re still afraid of what the press will do to them.”

She remains uncertain about whether her rehabilitation has hurt her husband’s career.

Her membership in Alcoholics Anonymous needed to be listed in military records for security clearance reasons, she said. Thomas Riley retired from the Marines in 1964 after 30 years of service. “I’d hate to think it hurt his career,” she said. “But it may have.”

As for herself, Riley said joining Alcoholics Anonymous has forced her to take inventory of her personal self, not as someone’s daughter, sister or wife.

Now, she said, “I take full responsibility for everything I say and do. It’s not necessary to hide behind (the image of) being my husband’s wife.”