No Drinking Allowed at This Home : Temperance: A few residents of the WCTU Home for Women in Eagle Rock admit to indulging in wine when visiting families or friends.

Dressed in black, with the sparest hint of lace at her high-collared neck, the late Frances E. Willard casts a stern gaze from her portrait in the auditorium of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Home for Women in Eagle Rock. At the back of the room are stacks of paperback songbooks, featuring no-nonsense tunes such as the “WCTU Fighting Song”:

Chase the “Killer Number One”

And get him on the run.

Go forward, soldiers, draw your swords.

“The battle is the Lord’s.”

But if the ubiquitous Miss Willard could peer through her pince-nez at the upright piano, she’d see that the ladies of the WCTU home lately have been singing of sentiment instead of sobriety: The book over the keyboard is open to the sad, romantic ballad “When You and I Were Young, Maggie.”

A few years back, the last of the home’s centenarians died. They were the ones who remembered the days when women wore white ribbons of temperance as they marched down sin-filled streets and through forbidden saloon doors, hatchets drawn.

When the WCTU built its retirement home in Eagle Rock, it was assumed that the ladies who would dwell there would have devoted their lives to the temperance movement. But the golden years of the WCTU faded long ago. Today, residents agree not to drink, but say they don’t give much thought to the fiery movement that gave their home its start. From a peak of more than 700,000 members between 1885 and 1920, the membership of the national group has dwindled to about 40,000 card-carrying teetotalers. But, despite the loss of many older members, the group has held its own in recent years because of a resurgence of concern over drunk driving and alcoholism, said spokesman Mike Vitucci from the organization’s Evanston, Ill., headquarters.

On a quiet street in Eagle Rock, at one of just two WCTU retirement homes left in the nation (the other is in Kearney, Neb.) no firebrands of the movement remain. Many of the home’s residents admit that, until they moved in, they thought that the WCTU had gone the way of Prohibition more than half a century ago.

When activities director Cynthia Paredes arrived in 1981, about 20% of the women at the neatly landscaped, antique-furnished home on Norwalk Avenue were longtime WCTU members, she said. But no more.

“Very, very few have come to us recently,” Paredes said.

Residents must sign a pledge never to smoke or drink in the home, but they do not have to join the organization. In fact, advertisements for the retirement home highlight the beauty shop, movies and ice cream socials instead of temperance, and plainly state, “WCTU MEMBERSHIP NOT REQUIRED.”

“I knew nothing about the WCTU until I came here,” said 89-year-old Harriet Wachowski.

“I make fun of it a lot now,” she says with a twinkle in her eye. “Why don’t we get some guys in here and liven it up a little bit? I’d like to see a little dancing. Something lively!”

On the sly, a handful of women at the home admit to indulging in a glass of wine when they leave to visit friends or family. Still, administrators insist that there has never been a problem with residents succumbing to the wiles of demon drink.

The women said they chalked up a victory several years ago when administrators of the self-sustaining center persuaded the Southern California WCTU Board of Trustees to approve a game they named “Zingo,” although the board frowned upon another game with a suspiciously similar name and identical rules.

Such frivolity was hardly the order of the day in 1874, when the WCTU was founded in Cleveland, dedicated to total abstinence and closure of raucous saloons, as well as the less specific ideals of self control, pure thoughts and clean habits as called for in one temperance pledge.

Willard, the second national president, led the group’s quest for women’s suffrage, equal rights, child welfare laws and prison reform, alcohol education and world peace. Always on the agenda were ways to combat prostitution, gambling and smoking, but the greatest enemy remained spirits in any form. The group even campaigned against the use of alcohol in perfume.

Interest waxed and waned through the years, with a marked dip during Prohibition, when many women dropped their membership, feeling the battle was won. In Los Angeles, where the WCTU set down roots in 1883, 10,000 women wore white ribbons “for purity and sobriety” in 1923. Today, just 1,500 copies of the monthly newsletter are printed. Local chapter officials, however, declined to say how may people pay the $5 annual membership dues.

Even the group’s leaders say it doesn’t have a very high profile.

“Lots of people are real surprised we’re still in business,” said Margaret Hammarstrom, executive director of the WCTU Home for Women.

Buoyed by a solid reputation in the medical community and a spotless state inspection record, the all-female WCTU Home has managed to thrive even though few still remember firsthand Carry Nation’s defiant brand of tambourine-banging, bottle-smashing, hymn-singing temperance. Of the home’s 117 rooms, 89 are occupied.

Several ground-floor apartments are reserved for upstairs boarders who, in the near future, may need to be closer to the first floor dining room and nursing station. Generally, Paredes said, there is a waiting list for rooms with private baths, which range from $885 to $1,025 a month.

Staff members have taken pains to make it feel like home. On the wall of each room hangs a “Bless this House” needlepoint, and the one in Antonia LaBianca’s cottage says “Benedice La Casa,” because the group thought she’d like it better in her native Italian.

Because two-thirds of the residents have no families, they make Christmas gifts and get-well cards for each other. One woman who was found living in a garage was taught how to write her name. Demure Rose Greenfield, 80, was urged to try her hand at crocheting in an attempt to draw her into the companionship of the activities group. Her flawless first attempt, a lap robe, is now the pride of the home.

On a recent day, business was brisk at the beauty shop, where soft permanent waves with pin curls on the side are the style of choice. Bible reading and Zingo were listed on the daily schedule; the ladies were mightily pleased with both the tapioca pudding and the tender corned beef and cabbage for lunch. In the activities circle, bickering broke out about how the count goes for a certain head-and-neck exercise dubbed “The Dizzy One.”

As they chatted later, the subject turned to moonshine.

Celia Hoffman, 88, remembers her father leading a temperance parade in Edinburgh, Va., 11-year-old Celia in the lead. Across her chest, she wore a banner that read, “Down with John Barleycorn!”

Things were different for Emily Branon in east Texas, where Daddy had a corn liquor still.

“One day we were having lunch and a guy came by and talked my father into selling him some hooch,” recalls Branon, 78. “He put the bottle in his pocket and came right back and arrested him!”

Rumor has it that Al Capone’s boys used to deliver gin to the back porch of one of the women who lives at the home, but on this particular morning, no one ‘fessed up.

These days at the WCTU home, “Us” magazine shares the reading table with “Guideposts” and “Modern Maturity.” Ebba Severance, 79, teases her buddy Frances Jenkins, 80, about never missing “Dallas” or the scandalous afternoon soaps. Zingo regulars marvel at the luck of the longstanding champion, now hospitalized, who’s won “more postage stamps than you can shake a stick at.”

On the other hand, there will never be a happy hour at this retirement home. More than a third of the 89 residents have signed the WCTU membership pledge since their arrival: “I hereby solemnly promise, God helping me, to abstain from all distilled, fermented, and malt liquors, including wine, beer, and hard cider, and to employ all proper means to discourage the use of and traffic in the same.”

Pictures of The Last Supper and Jesus adorn many of the hallways, and one spirited resident exits a conversation saying, “Onward Christian Soldiers, girls! Keep it together!”

Director Hammarstrom, a longtime WCTU member, folds her hands on her desk and makes one point very clear. Things have changed, yes. “But we do not drink. We do not. We do not make toasts. We do not drink wine. We do not drink.”