trouble turning off visual line mode

[Allan Gottlieb <gottlieb@nyu.edu>]

I have the following function in my .emacs

;; Want auto-fill and not visual-line-mode
;; Define the function here; add to hook via customize
(defun ajg-html-visual-off-fill-on ()
  "For html, turn OFF visual-line-mode and turn-ON auto fill"
  (message "ckpt 1")
  (visual-line-mode -1)
  (message "ckpt 2")
  (auto-fill-mode 1)
  (message "ckpt 3")
  )

I have it put in the html-mode-hook via

(custom-set-variables
...
 '(html-mode-hook (quote (ajg-alter-electric-html-tag ajg-html-visual-off-fill-on)))
...
)

Yet when I visit an html file
auto-fill-mode is turned on as expected but
visual-line-mode is *not* turned off.

Any help would be appreciated.
thanks,
allan

PS.

All three ckpt msgs are in *Message*, with nothing in between
The mode line shows wrap and fill