Alice Raines

Alice Antoinette Celeste Fox Raines, 86, of Hemet, California, passed away peacefully in her home on October 1, 2024, after a second battle with Covid.

Alice was raised a good Catholic girl in the lovely and then very middle- and working-class Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood of Park Slope. Her mother descended from Irish immigrants who, through decades of skilled labor, achieved a comfortable affluence. Her father came from German and hardscrabble English ancestors. Her mother was a teacher and high school librarian. Her father was a subway motorman with a master's in English who later became an attorney, working his way through law school while keeping the City moving during the Depression and War.

Despite lifelong learning disabilities ("blocks" as she would ruefully describe them), Alice persevered and was a well-mannered student. She attended St. Francis Xavier Grammar School and St. Angela Hall Academy in Brooklyn, where she was appreciated by the nuns and staff, and the College of St. Rose in Albany. Years later she earned a degree at Glendale College, in Glendale, California, making her family proud.

In Brooklyn Alice was part of a lively social scene. Her perfectly laid out photo albums are filled with female and male friends (and more than a few boyfriends!), names and dates carefully inscribed in her perfect penmanship. She had a beautiful, broad smile that remained unchanged, undiminished and loved by all, across all decades.

Some of Alice's fondest memories and friendships were made at Willsboro Point, New York, on the warm, peaceful shores of Lake Champlain, where her family summered in a pleasant shady cabin people called "The Camp." Alice excelled at swimming, her favorite activity, and thoroughly enjoyed out-swimming the gang of friends as well as palling around on hikes and at camp parties.

Alice adored the beach and the water. Eager to leave the sooty red brick and grey skies of Brooklyn, at 23 she sailed to Hawaii to begin a new life. She loved to describe the moment she sailed into Honolulu past the Aloha Tower and drank in the island air. She settled in Waikiki and rented a small apartment with three other young women. She and her roommates, surviving on low-paying jobs in the ever-expensive 50th State, liked to joke that they kept their slim figures through starvation.

She met her first husband, Jack, there, and although the marriage wasn't compatible, it produced her beloved son, Kenneth. She returned to Brooklyn and lived with her parents until they passed - a cruel and early shock to all. However, with the support of her sister, Rosemary, Alice was able to balance single parenting with full time work. She was even able to take one great "trip of a lifetime," a two-week cruise and land exploration of Europe. She also visited New England, Canada, and the Bahamas in her younger adult years. She loved photography and was adept with her light meter and Yashica SLR.

Eventually she met her second husband, Lorenzo, and they moved to Los Angeles, where they lived for 28 years and where their beloved daughter, Audra, was born. They bought their first home in the hills of Northeast LA. Alice worked hard during those years, raising the kids, working full time, and, with Lorenzo, devoting many weekends to improving their modest little house.

As a girl she saw nearly every movie that played. Van Johnson and David Niven were among her favorite stars. Later in life she was less interested in the changing modern cinema but rocked the house with laughter at "All in the Family" and "The Carol Burnett Show" on television. She enjoyed classical music, the songs of George Gershwin and pop standards of the '40s and early '50s. Usually not a rock 'n' roll fan, in a mid-life fancy she became a devotee of Elvis Presley. Lorenzo and she took dancing lessons in the '70s and enjoyed their time on the floor quite thoroughly.

Alice was well trained in a New York City business college and spent over 45 years in a variety of office support roles at private businesses in NY and LA, most notably 13 years at Prudential Reinsurance as an Administrative Assistant. She was modest but quite adept at a multitude of tasks.

She loved order, decorum and good manners, yet while she eschewed vulgarity she thoroughly enjoyed a ribald joke or pun. She was ever curious and a lover of human stories, spending many hours reading not just for fun but for and about self-improvement. She struggled mightily with the nervous system she was given but never gave up on finding ways to cope, to improve, to master her challenges. Like most of us, she agonized about the things that she could not control, yet she was more disciplined than she ever gave herself credit for. With careful financial attention while raising her children, she budgeted the family income down to the penny. Despite the stretch on the family resources, she put her kid's education first, insisting on private schools and encouraging them daily to set their sights on a college education.

Alice read to her children every night. She instilled in them a love for stories and learning, as well as an understanding of right and wrong. She told her children often that she loved them. Motherhood was, at times, a struggle. There had been pain in her life, deep pain. And she had caused pain. She was a human being. But above all else she was a mother who loved her children, and they knew it.

She had a full and animated relationship with her equally passionate and deeply loved sister, Rosemary, from whom she'd moved thousands of miles away. They never stayed out of touch for long, much to the delight of Ma Bell's shareholders. Despite a continent's breadth between them, and a world of personality differences, their deep devotion and spiritual bond held strong to her last day.

Alice nurtured a lifelong passion for politics. Her hero was Ronald Reagan, whom she was thrilled to have once met. Her favorite columnist was William F. Buckley, Jr., whose verbose, erudite and playful commentary with people across the political spectrum gave her much enjoyment.

In 1995, Alice and Lorenzo moved to Hemet, where he died in 1999 from cancer. In 2003, she married her third husband, Bill, and they spent several retirement years driving across the USA and Canada, visiting family and friends and experiencing new sights.

She had drifted from the Church for much of her life, always defending and believing but participating only occasionally. Later, however, she returned and found great comfort in the presence of her Lord.

In her last years, as her body diminished, her grace increased and her life became a life of praying, praying for us, for our health, for our prosperity, for our happiness. Praying for our nation and its people.

The excited kid outside the movie house, the perky teen at the soda shop, the beach babe "office girl" with only a jar of mustard in her fridge, the mother, the worker, the planner, the wife, the neighbor, the sister, the patriot, the grandmother was at last all those things forged into a vessel of the Holy Spirit. She is in His arms now, his good and faithful servant.

Alice is survived by her loving husband, Willard "Bill" Raines; sister, Rosemary Fox McCamish of Newark, Ohio; son, Kenneth Raleigh Malcomson (Heidi) of Eureka, California; daughter, Audra Pommier Houston (Andrew) of Vancouver, Washington; nephew, Boyd McCamish (Tina); grandchildren Andrea, Kayleigh and Logan Malcomson, Candace and Maxwell Houston; great nephew, Liam and great niece, Erin; stepson, Thomas Raines (Connie); stepdaughter, Tammy Raines Maus; step-grandchildren Jordyn Raines, Kendra Black, Alanna Kartchner (Adam), Dalton Jansen, Winter Angel Griggs, and Wayne and Wesley Maus.

She was preceded in death by her father, Kenneth Fox, her mother, Alice Raleigh Fox, and her husbands Lorenzo Pommier and Jack Malcomson.

All of the family is especially grateful for the extra support and care that Tommy, Connie and Jordyn gave to Alice in her later years, and for Bill, faithful to the end and now heartbroken by loss.

Graveside funeral service was held at Forest Lawn in Glendale, California, at Noon Saturday November 9, 2024. A reception followed. Our family is forever grateful to those that were able to attend.