Alice Radics is the unofficial ambassador of goodwill at LKMC
She’s known as Alice, but her nametag says “Betty.”
“Well,” she sing songs, “you can all me Alice, you can call me Betty, you can call me Fred…”
Her name is actually Alice Elizabeth Radics and she’s a breath of sunshine to patients at Lower Keys Medical Center, as well as clients of the American Cancer Society.
Radics is a dietary aide in Nutritional Services at LKMC, going from patient room to patient room, taking meal orders. “And I’m a goodwill ambassador,” she adds of her completely volunteer job.
She is also a volunteer for ACS, using one of her days off to bake and the other one to sell her cookies, brownies “and one cupcake at a time” in the hospital lobby with the income going to ACS’s Relay for Life. Three years ago, she received an award from ACS as top fund-raiser in the state.
But, all that is only part of her story. Radics, whose husband, Robert, is bedridden, is the daughter of the late Capt. Winfred “Red” Williams. Red, who died in 1994, was the captain to both Ernest Hemingway and Capt. Tony Tarantino. He was also the owner and proprietor for many years of Red’s Bar, a prominent local hangout on Caroline Street, right off Duval.
Radics’ mother died when she was 3 years old, leaving the young girl to be raised by her father. She didn’t often see the inside of Red’s Bar. “Maybe for his birthday and once when I put a barber chair in there so he could sit comfortably.”
Red wouldn’t let her be in the bar otherwise. In fact, for 13 years she was in St. Mary’s Convent. However, she did meet Daddy at 6 every morning for breakfast at Shorty’s restaurant.
And, the 67-year-old woman hadn’t been off Key West (including Stock Island) until the past year when she went to Mt. Sinai Hospital in Miami to pick up her ailing husband.
She and Robert have been married for 15 years, together for 37. Why that lengthy time without benefit of a marriage license. “I was a wild child,” she laughs.
As an adult, she owned her own bar, the Bamboo Room at George’s Saloon on Applerouth Lane “where the best (breasts) in town hang out,” she says. It became “George’s” “after a gentleman I was hanging with.” After three years, realizing the job was 24 hours, 7 days a week, she sold it.
She worked for awhile at Sunbeam Grocery on White Street some 27 years ago, then began working at the Pier House, rising from lobby attendant to assistant executive housekeeper over 23 years.
It was during her Pier House days that she became legally blind, corrected only by cataract surgery performed by Dr. Robert Douville. “Within a year, I could see 20/20,” she says. “He saved my life.”
She was employee of the year once at the Pier House, Associate of the Month “three or four times.”
Seven years ago, she left the Pier House and immediately started working at the hospital. “I didn’t get a day’s vacation,” she laughs. (She’s always laughing, or at least smiling.)
Now, she and her husband have “my chosen brother,” Mark Warmuth, as their support system.
Meanwhile, she continues to be honored with employee awards as she cheerfully walks the halls at Lower Keys.
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