Family secrets can sometimes hide instructive lessons. That line of thinking led local author Edith Hazard Birney to write her latest work of creative nonfiction.
Birney’s recent publication, titled “An Anonymous Gift: Who was Rowland H.?”, is about her grandfather’s life, much of which was a closely held secret in her family. She hopes readers walk away with a sense of hope for people who are struggling with addiction.
Local author Edith Hazard Birney publishes her third book this year, called “An Anonymous Gift Who was Rowland H.?” Courtesy of Robert Mitchel
“No one asked any questions about [Rowland], and we got along perfectly, but that led me to think this is ridiculous, and I would like to know more,” Birney said.
Rowland Hazard came from significant wealth and was part of an old family line dating back to the early 1800s. The Hazards primarily made their money in Rhode Island and eventually expanded to have a lead mine in Missouri, along with Solvay Process Company, which became Allied Chemical. Most of the book’s action takes place between the 1920s and 1940s.
One reason Rowland was a family secret was that he struggled with alcoholism. He became a patient of Dr. Carl Jung, who told Rowland he was hopeless and the only way to beat his alcoholism was to have a conversion experience, a methodology used by the Oxford Group in London, run by Frank Buchman.
“When you face the horror of addiction, it seems pretty hopeless,” Birney said.
Rowland returned to the United States and hosted different Oxford Group members in Shaftsbury, Vermont. Someone in the town of Shaftsbury, Ebby Thatcher, who Rowland knew, was about to go to jail for being publicly drunk and disorderly for the third time. Rowland stepped in to take the person into his care and was able to set Thatcher straight.
Thatcher had connections with Bill Wilson, the head of Alcoholics Anonymous, whom he later connected with in New York and told him about the methods the Oxford Group used, which led to Wilson getting involved with the Oxford Group to learn about the conversion experience. Rowland brought the methodology from the Oxford Group to Wilson, who modified the methods and directed it toward addiction.
Birney began writing “An Anonymous Gift” 25 years ago and felt it was an important story to share. Birney said it took a lot of work and research to write the book while raising four kids.
She researched the book by reading Rowland’s letters kept at Yale in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and went to La Luz, New Mexico, to a ranch the Hazards used to own to interview around eight to 10 people who knew Rowland.
“Most of them were hired hands that worked on the ranch, and so they remember him in different ways,” Birney said.
Birney began writing in 1990, and her first two books were “Rising to the Occasion,” published in 1993; and “Singing for Your Supper,” published two years later. Birney talked with her two brothers during the writing process, Charlie Bruce Hazard and Rowland Hazard, and after they read the book, they said to Birney they wished their father had been able to read it.
Birney has other projects in the works but is focused on selling “Anonymous Gift” for now, which Birney says is the hardest part. The new historical creative nonfiction book was published in January and is available at Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick and Sherman’s in Freeport.
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