Recovery members: The life of Mae Low

MAE WILLETT LOW (1903-1971)
"To Mae, The Mother of My Children and A Mother to My Patients" (Dedication by Abraham A. Low, M.D., in Mental Health Through Will-Training)

Written and presented by Marilyn Low Schmitt
and Phyllis Low Berning, in honor of the 65th anniversary Recovery, Inc., and the centennial of their mother’s birth.

2003 will be the centennial year of Mae Willett Low’s birth.

Mae Willett was born in Chicago on October 17, 1903. Her mother, Hannah Vaardaal, was a Norwegian immigrant who married the American Edward Willett. Having grown up in Chicago, the future Mrs. Low worked for some dozen years as a secretary on LaSalle Street, in the heart of Chicago’s financial district.

During the 1920's, Abraham Low became the family physician of the Willetts while he was establishing his medical career in Chicago. As he moved on to research in neurology and psychiatry, the family lost touch with him until, some ten years later, Mae Willett and Abraham Low encountered each other by chance along Michigan Avenue. They married on June 18, 1935, in Chicago. He was 44, she was 31.

For a year and a half, Mae Low accompanied her husband, now a psychiatrist working for the state of Illinois, on his inspections of mental hospitals. These trips, so valuable for understanding the plight of the mental patient, ceased with the birth of their daughters, Phyllis and Marilyn, in 1936 and 1939.

From then on, Mae Low devoted herself to home, children, and – their third child – Recovery, Inc. She worked side by side with her husband on the development and organization of this new concept: a system of self-help for mental and nervous patients. She faithfully attended all his Tuesday night lectures and, when family concerns allowed, his Saturday afternoon panels. She came to know his patients as if part of her family, and, with Phyllis and Marilyn, joined in the social events that punctuated the early years of the organization.

As the radical thinking of Recovery, Inc., attracted professional resentment, Mae Low suffered through the departure of Dr. Low from the University of Illinois Research Hospital, the insecurities of establishing a private practice, an attempt to revoke his license to practice, and the barring of his patients from all but two hospitals in the Chicago area. Through all these ordeals, Mae Low maintained a calm and secure homelife for her husband and children, while continuing to work tirelessly on his behalf.

When these tribulations were past and the family had moved to a comfortable house in Evanston, Mae Low made it the center not only of family life but of a social environment that included friends, patients, and professionals interested in Dr. Low’s work. It was also a refuge for his writing and thinking, so important to the development of Recovery, Inc. She protected the third floor study, "the ivory tower," as his private retreat, closed even to herself and the children except in case of special need for consultation.

During the last months of Abraham Low's life, Mae Low acted as nurse and confidant to him, and as correspondent to anxious Recovery members. After his death, she joined forces with Annette Brocken and, later, Treasure Rice to reorganize Recovery, Inc., as a truly patient-led self-help organization.

The three women worked with many longtime faithful stalwarts, such as Phil Crane, who over years persuaded myriad professionals of the value of the Recovery Method and oversaw leader training with Treasure Rice, the tireless evangelist who spread Recovery groups into many new areas; Maxine Crane, always the great public relations director; Caroline Philipp, the longtime office manager; Frank and Harriette Rochford, Agnes Dumont, Gertrude Beres, Ann Landis, and many others who eventually served on the Recovery board.

These many veteran and new Recovery members combined forces to create the international Recovery, Inc., we know today. With these loyal pioneers, Mae Willett Low worked to create the structure that would attract and enable countless generations who had never known her husband, Dr. Abraham Low, to carry on his work as a self-help system of concepts and tools that could be used by average people.