Marion S. is a lady who knows what it is to beat the odds. When her son took her to her "fourth and last treatment center" in 1974, he was told he should not hold out much hope for her surviving more than a year.

"I was 58. I´d been drinking heavily for more than a year-six beers for breakfast and a fifth of vodka a day. My son had to carry me into Alcenas (the treatment center). I was so sick I couldn´t walk.

"Now here I am 24 years later, 84 years old and having a great time." Not only is Marion sober and alive, but she´s a role model for every senior citizen who thinks a vigorous life filled with friends, travel and physical health is behind them. She had bloated to 165 pounds on her tiny frame when she entered treatment, and now keeps her weight at a trim 110.

Every morning except Sunday, and only not then because the pool is closed, Marion gets up early and swims 10 laps (equivalent to a quarter the length of a football field) at the Queen Anne public pool at 6 a.m., a regimen she has followed for 17 years. But that´s not all. Until a recent knee injury, she walked around Green Lake, a distance of 2.8 miles, three times a week, and in the off days, walked even farther on the streets of Queen Anne near her home. She plans to get back to her walking as soon as possible.

Actually, she´s spent a lifetime exercising. "I would have died if I had not taken some care of myself. I could be pretty drunk and still ski." (Editor: more recently, Marion has curtailed her physical activity since she suffered another fall and is now recuperating in a retirement home.)

She has traveled all over the world, often with women she has sponsored who have become her close friends, and has been an important part of Seattle AA´s service programs. One example: she holds the longevity record for answering phones at Intergroup, 18 years. She gave that up only last summer because of declining eyesight (though that problem has not prevented her from driving.) She credits her weekly stints on the Intergroup phones as an important factor in her recovery. "Those 18 years helped me a lot ´cause I was working with Angus and Jill. They were both good listeners, and I had a lot to talk about. I shared so much there." (Angus L. was then the office manager. Jill B-D was the administrative assistant, and has become office manager since Angus´s retirement.)

"Recovery has been a real joy to me," Marion said the other day. "Everything has been positive. I´m sure I was saved from death for a purpose, and I truly believe that purpose was to help others. I sponsor lots of people. I sponsored one girl for 20 years. I urge people to call me. I´m the mother image to many of them.

"I´ve worked with many wonderful people. Sharing is so important, a real part of our recovery. That´s why I´m so open about my alcoholism. When I meet people, if it´s at all possible, I let them know I´m a recovering alcoholic because you might reach somebody, maybe a child, who needs help. For the same reason, I´m real happy to pass out my phone number. I´m proud of being in AA, proud of my recovery and proud of not being a drunk anymore."

For four years, Marion sponsored a meeting at a halfway house for women who had been paroled from Purdy State Prison. More recently, she helped get a meeting established at the AA office¸ called Sober Zone. "I get back more than I give. Isn´t that always the way it works? I still go to three meetings a week. As I get older, I need the support of AA more than ever. I hate getting old. Everybody does."

But that has not slowed her down. Her second husband had divorced her before she finally sobered up. "I didn´t blame him. I was a mess. But we became good friends again, and he always supported me. He used to pick me up at my job downtown ´cause he didn´t want me coming home alone."

Marion cared for her ex-husband until his death last year at the age of 88. "Neither one of us ever remarried. I was advised at the treatment center to live by myself if I wanted to stay sober, and so I have ever since. I was told that I was so badly addicted I had to stay away from anything negative, like marriage. But that didn´t keep Clyde and me from becoming wonderful friends again."

Marion credits several things for bringing her to sobriety and saving her life, but none more than her son, Dick. He literally carried her into the treatment center on Sept. 13, 1974, when her new life began. As time went on, he became so fascinated with her recovery and with the problems of alcoholism that he decided to become a counselor. He works in a recovery center in Burien.

Marion credits the treatment center with another invaluable piece of advice: "Attend meetings at Fremont when you get out." Fremont, now located at 8916 Aurora Ave. N., was for many years in the heart of old Fremont before the neighborhood was gentrified. "If it hadn´t been for Fremont and the people there, I don´t think I´d have stayed sober. My self-esteem was at rock bottom, but I found people at Fremont who had drunk more than I had and were worse than I was. Like the man who used to drink canned heat out of his shoes. And here he was now, a successful businessman. I´d been a successful businesswoman, and I figured if he could do it, I could too."

For several years, she visited many churches looking for one where she felt at home, but never found one. Her "church" home is AA. But that doesn´t mean she doesn´t believe in God. In fact, she says her sudden desire to quit drinking while in the treatment center was the grace of God. "Sometimes, when people drink like I drank, drunk all the time, they´re sort of insane. Then the Grace of God steps in because God abhors suicide, and that´s what I was doing-committing suicide."

She got a job living in and managing a 30-unit apartment-with a pool, no less-- and later worked for a department store downtown until she retired 17 years ago. Meanwhile, following in her father´s footsteps, she invested successfully-Microsoft included-and is able to live comfortably and travel. Those travels have taken her on safari in Africa, many trips to the pyramids of Mexico, to China with a group of Chinese seniors from Seattle, and most notably, to Russia, where she helped establish some AA meetings. She´s about to embark for a Caribbean cruise she won in a radio contest when a sponsee entered her name. She and the sponsee are going together.

Marion has lived all her life in Western Washington, most of that time in Seattle. She was born in Tacoma Sept. 13, 1916 and grew up in the great Depression. She worked 12 hours a day in her father´s store on First Hill in those years. He had a lunch counter and sold ice cream and, when Prohibition was repealed in 1933, added beer to his stock. So Marion early on developed a tasted for both. "Dad used to let me drink the foam off his glass," she said.

She remembers her father with great affection and admiration. "We all worked to keep ahead of the Depression. My father said any money left over would go to feed hungry people. We never turned away a hungry person. Because of that childhood training, today I´m a poor taker but a great giver."

She went to the old Broadway High School (one building of which is preserved as part of Central Seattle Community College), where the thing to do was to go out and drink beer. But her taste for liquor began much earlier, when her mother soothed childhood aches and pains with hot toddies.

Marion spent three years at University of Washington, expanding her drinking habits in sorority life. Then she quit to go to business college, a better route to a job, but wound up back at her parents´ store until she married her first husband. He turned out to be an alcoholic, she said, and taught her to drink that way. "I was astounded that he´d have a drink in the morning before breakfast, but pretty soon I´m havin´ one too." She left him over his gambling, not his drinking, "´cause I wanted to eat the rest of my life. I have a great appreciation for money, though I´ve learned in sobriety that if you have enough, that´s all you need."

Her first husband served in the maritime service during the war. He died at the age of 36. Things went from bad to worse through her second marriage, though it lasted for 28 years. In the 26th year, both her father and her sister died of cancer.

"I just started drinking and kept on drinking. I owned a shoe store on Queen Anne at the time that was doing fine in spite of me because I had a wonderful manager. He ran the business and I did the drinking. Then we lost the building and the business closed." She had been sober a year and thought she was broke when her old manager showed up with $10,000 he had extracted from sale of the stock. That money allowed her to buy an apartment. Ten years later, when she had made some money in the market, she was able to give him a substantial severance settlement. "That was an important amends to me," Marion said.

Right now, Marion is recovering from a severe fall she had while vacationing in Vancouver. Her face was cut and she has a bruised eye, but she is her usual indomitable self. And what does the future hold? "Well, I´m 84. I´m just grateful to still be here and get up every morning. I don´t think about tomorrow. I´m only going to be here today and know what I´m doing today."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.