Alice Reilly was born in 1924 in New York. Her mother died as a result of the birth and her Dad, unable to deal with a newborn and his four year old daughter, put Alice in an orphanage. She was there for two years before being taken in by her Aunt and Uncle. This unstable early childhood would cripple her ability to ever feel like she truly belonged.  

She never finished high school and was eager to be part of a real family, so in 1949 she married Bob Fitzsimmons. They moved to West Islip, New York, and had three children.  Unfortunately, It was not a good marriage. There were many verbal fights that often escalated to physical violence. In May of 1962 , Bob had Alice committed to a state mental facility where she was subjected to electric shock treatments and a barrage of experimental antidepressant drugs. She was released after two months and things only got worse in the family unit. In July 1962, Alice, her husband, and three children were physically evicted from the rental home they had been living in. Alice had to scurry to find shelter and after unsuccessfully pleading with friends and relatives she and the kids moved into the back of a television repair store owned by a friend of Bob’s where they stayed for five months. This was another blow to Alice’s need to belong and have a happy family. Two years after her husband left he took her out and asked her to sign separation papers.  After agreeing to do that, she found out they were actually divorce papers and once again she found herself abandoned.  

Without marketable skills and with deep emotional scars, she applied for welfare, but the check barely covered the cost of rent and food. It was hard for her to see her children suffer without decent clothing or the basic need every child deserves. She took to cleaning houses and taking in ironing to supplement the small state stipend. Every so often, Alice was able to scrape together a couple of extra dollars and she’d come running home anxious to announce that we were going shopping for new shoes, clothes or other items that were considered a luxury. This gave her a little pleasure despite her humble standard of living, inability to financially care for her children, and the emotional roller coaster that was her life.   

When her children grew up and started lives of their own,  Alice insisted on living in a run-down hotel where she cleaned the rooms of local drug dealers and prostitutes. Despite her children’s offers to pay for a nicer place, she insisted on staying where she felt she belonged and told them she was comfortable with the girls at the laundromat and taking care of the boarders at the motel.  

Alice died in 1998 at the age of 72. Cleaning up her menial belongings, her children found receipts showing that for years Alice had been sending $5 a month to “adopt” a child in Africa. She tried to make up for what she couldn’t do for her children.  

Now, thousands of children are helped in her name and she belongs to the family called “Alice’s Kids.”