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Lt. Colonel Lois Allen
Promoted to Glory
Lt. Colonel Lois Allen was promoted to Glory on Oct. 27, 2010, from Hemet, Calif.
Lois Joyce Enscoe was born Jan. 24, 1932, in Los Angeles, Calif., to Stanley and Ilo Enscoe.
At age 16, Lois, while camping in the Santa Monica mountains, first encountered The Salvation Army through a boy from Mt. Crags Camp (Calabasas, Calif.), who invited her to Sunday services at the Hollywood (Calif.) Tabernacle Corps. Soon she became more involved.
In 1951, she enrolled in the Intercessors Session at the School for Officer Training (SFOT) in San Francisco. After commissioning, she spent the next 42 years as an Army officer.
She met her future husband, fellow cadet David Allen, at SFOT. They married two years after completing school.
Their first appointments together were in San Diego and Oxnard, Calif., prior to an assignment as trainees at the San Francisco Men’s Social Service Center—now known as the Adult Rehabilitation Center (ARC). Here, Lois discovered her passion for ministering to addicted men and women.
After San Francisco they became ARC center directors in Honolulu (Hawaii), Portland (Ore.), and Sacramento (Calif.) Their final appointment at a Men’s Social Service Center was in Oakland (Calif.), where they served 11 years and built a new facility. By this time they had four children: Denise, John Stanley, Sharon and David Jr.
Lois had a gift for balancing her commitments as a mother and a student—she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree—and her ministry, in which she carved out an independent role for herself where she could be innovative, develop new programs and make use of her many skills.
After Oakland, the Allens became the divisional secretary and head of women’s programs for the Northwest Division. Following that, they assumed roles at the School for Officer Training in Palos Verdes, Calif.
They then took command of the Western Territory’s ARC program where they worked for the next 12 years. As director of program development, Lois excelled at integrating families into the recovery process—placing spirituality at the center of rehabilitation—and initiated a structured six-month “how to” program that became a program model.
At retirement, the Allens moved to Perris, Calif., which was close to the Perris ARC—the site where they had built the most recent center. For the next eight years, Lois worked as an addiction counselor and developed an internship program in cooperation with the University of California, Riverside.
Lois is survived by her husband Lt. Colonel David Allen, four children and eight grandchildren.