STEP BY STEP.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

As a general practitioner in Eugene in the 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Thomas Kerns delivered babies and did surgeries, but he also took a special interest in helping the alcoholics who came to see him, though there wasn't much in the medical literature on treating the disease.

Not until a friend, a recovering alcoholic, brought him a book on Alcoholics Anonymous in 1970 did Kerns see there was a different way to treat such patients. The 12-step method for quitting alcohol - and changing one's values and the way one lived - was a revelation.

"I read that and learned more about alcoholism from that book than I had learned in medical school," he said.

Three years later, Kerns started a treatment center in Eugene that would use the AA methods and philosophy to help get drunks clean and sober. Thirty-one years later, Serenity Lane has treated nearly 40,000 alcoholics and drug addicts and branched out to include nine outpatient clinics around Oregon.

On Tuesday, the Governor's Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs will recognize Kerns, now 85, for his lifetime of work on treating alcoholism and addiction by awarding him the Thomas R. Dargan Award. The award, named for the council's first chairman, is the council's highest honor.

It's the kind of spotlight the self-effacing Kerns managed to avoid for most of his career. He was, say his friends and former co-workers, more interested in getting people sober than getting credit.

"Dr. Kerns didn't care about the money," even when Serenity Lane was struggling financially, said Andy White, the treatment center's receptionist for 25 years. "He just wanted to help the alcoholics.

"All the alcoholics in Eugene knew they could call Dr. Kerns 24/7. They would call in the middle of the night and he'd go to help, no matter where they were."

A Nebraska native, Kerns said he took a special interest in alcoholism because his father, and his father's father, were alcoholics, as were other members of his extended family.

"My dad was never abusive to me in any way, but it made me feel sick when he was intoxicated," he said.

Kerns said not much was known at the time about the genetic aspects of alcoholism, but he always thought it was possible he too had the disease.

"It didn't really affect my drinking that much," he said. "I never really stopped drinking. I'll have a glass of wine now and then, so I must not have that particular gene, whatever it is."

After medical school, he served in the Navy, then set up practice in Grants Pass. Later, he moved to Eugene to practice at the Eugene Clinic. He did what he could for his alcoholic patients, even bringing them together for AA-inspired group meetings, but he wanted to do more.

At the time, the prevailing treatment for alcoholics was known as aversion therapy, Kerns said. Treatment involved giving alcoholics a drug that would make them vomit if they drank, such as Antabuse, and then force them to drink until they got sick. It works for some people, Kerns said, but not for everyone.

"I was not really anxious to start a treatment program like that because I didn't think that was the answer, especially after reading the AA book," he said. "They have to learn to live without alcohol."

One day a recovering alcoholic and AA member introduced Kerns to a friend of his visiting from out of town. Sam Graves was a counselor at the Heartview Foundation, a treatment hospital in Mandan, N.D., that followed the AA philosophy. Kerns was intrigued and in January 1972 visited the center, sitting in on the group meetings, listening to lectures and meeting the staff.

"I learned that was the kind of program I really had in the back of my head all the time," he said.

Kerns recruited Graves to come help him establish a similar program in Eugene. Graves said it was the force of Kerns' personality that prompted him to come.

"He just comes across so open and honest and he knew exactly what he wanted," Graves said, "and so when he asked me if I would consider coming on, I jumped at the chance of just working with him."

Genesis of treatment center

Kerns began holding weekly meetings in the basement of the Eugene clinic with local business owners and recovering alcoholics to make plans for the new treatment center. Lois O'Connor, who had an alcoholic relative, was secretary, and along with Graves and Kerns, was one of the pillars of Serenity Lane.

They raised funds and picked a name - Serenity Lane, derived from the Serenity Prayer often recited by alcoholics, and the center's location in Lane County.

"The treatment program had to be based on the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous," Kerns said. "It's called reality therapy. It helps a person understand in a realistic way what the proper values of life should be."

Kerns was scouting for locations and found an abandoned fraternity house at 16th Avenue and Patterson Street. The price tag was $100,000, and businessman Don Lee Davidson came up with the $10,000 down payment. Using donated materials and labor, volunteers remodeled the place and converted it to a treatment hospital.

The center opened at noon May 5, 1973, with a staff of two. The first patient walked in the door an hour later.

Alcoholics, and later drug addicts, who came to Serenity Lane found their lives strictly regimented. Days were filled with group meetings with other recovering alcoholics, lectures, films, and counseling. Exercise was encouraged, and they ate well, but stimulants, even coffee, were forbidden.

When patients would complain they couldn't sleep at night - a common complaint of an alcoholic in recovery - Kerns would tell them, "Nobody ever died from lack of sleep."

Kerns kept his regular medical practice while serving as medical director at Serenity Lane. He would show up early in the morning, on his lunch hour and at night and on weekends.

He took patients' medical histories, conducted physical exams and took them through detoxification.

"His stamina was just unbelievable," Graves said.

Additions changed over time

Over the years, the type of addicts has evolved. In the early days it was all alcoholics, and then later, some prescription drug abusers. Now it's mostly drug addicts getting treatment at Serenity Lane.

Kerns' legacy lives on at Serenity Lane, where current and former staff members - and patients - greet the man with a smile and a hug.

"I don't think I've ever met a man I respect as much as Dr. Kerns," Graves said. "He was like a good, fantastic father. I never saw him raise his voice, get upset with anybody. He never chewed out a nurse."

So revered is Kerns that White, the receptionist, can't bring herself to call him "Tom."

"It's always Dr. Kerns," she said. "He's almost like a priest to me. He has that reverence."

AWARD CEREMONY

Who/what: Serenity Lane founder Dr. Thomas Kerns to receive Governor's Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs' Thomas R. Dargan Award

When/where: Tuesday, 10 a.m., Hearing Room 50 at the state Capitol in Salem

CAPTION(S):

Thomas Kerns' concern for alcoholics began early. "My dad was never abusive to me in any way, but it made me feel sick when he was intoxicated," he said. "All the alcoholics in Eugene knew they could call Dr. Kerns 24/7." - ANDY WHITE, SERENITY LANE RECEPTIONIST FOR 25 YEARS