The original
Alice . . .
In the middle of the Great Depression, she let a University of Chicago student sleep on her sofa. He had a scholarship to cover the tuition, but he had no money to pay for a room. Years later, he repaid her by naming his only daughter after her. Her most famous quote: "I'd rather be fat than wrinkled!" The original Alice with her parents and siblings
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Alice married past her youth
and had no children. As a young woman, she supported
herself as a hat maker. When hats went out of fashion,
she turned to dressmaking. Her legend was that, if a
woman could find a picture of the fanciest gown from
Paris and bring her the picture, Alice could make the
dress for the woman. When she finally married, she
married a Chicago newspaper man, who drank more than a
bit of alcohol, on more than an occasional basis. Alice
kept sewing and didn't depend on her husband for support.
She lived in a ground level apartment, in a neighborhood
near the University of Chicago, amidst her boxes of
fabric and buttons and thread.