friday, may 1, 1981
daily nebraskan
State temperance leader
has dream of dry country
By Patty Pryor
There is a place in Canada called Prince
Edward Island, where the abolition of
alcohol in 1900 has been upheld ever since.
That is Helen Patzel's dream for this
country. Patzel is the state president of the
Women's Christian Temperance Union, a
national organization which has existed for
nearly 107 years.
Prince Edward Island, with a population
of 90,000, has 13 policemen, no penitenti
ary, virtually no unemployment and very
few divorce cases, Patzel said.
Furthermore, she said, there have been
no reported cases of family desertion, wife
abuse or child neglect since 1957, and dur
ing some of those years, there were only
two automobile deaths for every 1,000
automobiles owned.
"We'd like to see prohibition, because
it's the only real answer," the 70-year-old
Patzel said.
She said alcohol's addictive qualities
make it nearly impossible to drink respons
ibly or only moderately.
"Our bodies are so constructed that it
takes increasingly higher levels to reach
the same state," she said.
Alcohol is responsible
The flow of alcohol is chiefly respon
sible for many of society's ills, she said.
Alcohol is responsible, she said, for the
majority of incarcerations, child abuse
cases and instances of mental retardation,
which is believed to result from drinking
during pregnancy.
The union also works against drug and
gambling-related issues and "anything that
hurts the family," Patzel said, but she con
siders alcohol the main source of most
problems.
"There's a whole building of kids at the
Lincoln Regional Center (where Patzel
worked for 14 years) who started out on
beer, and then progressed onto harder
things," she said.
Patzel also worked for a time at Bryan
Memorial Hospital as an RN supervisor,
where she became involved with the WCTU
in 1964.
She recalled the story of a premature
baby born at the hospital who went home
on a Tuesday, but was brought back in on
the following Saturday, after the parents'
car was involved in a head-on collision with
a drunk driver.
The baby, whose skull was crushed,
lived for three hours.
After sitting with the baby during those
hours, Patzel, who has four children, nine
grandchildren and one great-grandchild,
said she wondered if anyone was doing
anything about drunk drivers.
It was at this time that a fellow nurse
told her of a neighbor who was involved in
an organization, WCTU, that was doing
something about it.
Education is a target
Patzel went to the WCTU world conven
tion in Chicago that year with the neighbor
woman, and has been involved ever since.
One of the prime targets for WCTU
work is education, she said.
"We furnish films to schools through
the State Health Department Library," she
said. "All the school has to pay for is the
return postage."
Otherwise, Patzel said, she spends the
majority of her time in the legislature,
lobbying on behalf of the WCTU's inter
ests. "I go to the hearings, and follow
through on the (senators) who are not vot
ing the way we think they should," she
said. "It involves a lot of correspondence."
The amount of time she devotes to
lobbying efforts depends on the number of
proposed bills that concern the WCTU, she
said, adding that there were about 10 such
bills this past legislative season.
Among these bills was LB129, which
proposed to levy a higher tax on liquor to
help pay for alcohol treatment programs.
"If a cigarette tax built the Devaney
Sports Center," she added, "an alcohol tax
cm just as well build the new jail."
Continued on Page 13
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Photo by Jon S. Natvig
Helen Patzel
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