Albert Lexie, the Monessen shoeshine man who gave more than $202,000 in tips to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh’s Free Care Fund, died Tuesday at age 76, and the news made more than one person remark that heaven has gained an angel.
For more than 30 years, from 1981 until his retirement at the end of 2013, Mr. Lexie left home at 5:50 a.m. every Tuesday and Thursday and took several buses on the long trip to the city hospital, where he charged $2 or $3 to shine the shoes of staff and visitors. Having been inspired to volunteer by watching the hospital’s annual telethon, he donated his tips to help “my kids,” as he came to call the young patients.
The Free Care Fund, which he called “Albert’s Kids,” usually made more money than he did.
Now-hospital President Christopher Gessner remembers showing up for one of his first meetings there and “half the people in the room were shoeless. I thought, ‘Gee, this is odd.’ ”
It was just that Albert, as everyone knew him, was out in the hallway, doing his thing with polish and cloth, recalled Mr. Gessner, who doffed his shoes, too. “Some people would bring bags of shoes.”
Albert P. Lexie was born in 1942 in a Monessen housing project and built his first shoeshine box in shop class in eighth grade, which is as far as he went in school. He hauled a wooden shoeshine box to businesses up and down the Mon Valley. He never made much money — the hospital said only about $10,000 a year. After his mother died, he lived alone in a high-rise apartment, with help from his sister and her family.
But his own generosity with Children’s took him far, earning him countless friends and numerous awards, including the Outstanding Philanthropist Award from the Western Pennsylvania chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and a 1997 Jefferson Medal for Outstanding Citizens. He is in the Hall of Fame for Caring Americans in Washington, D.C.
Monessen High School gave Mr. Lexie an honorary diploma — and a class ring, a school jacket and a color TV — in 1999 on what his hometown proclaimed “Albert Lexie Day.” And Port Authority gave him a lifetime bus pass. Children’s gave him a purple cart for the shoeshine box. He kept rolling.
He became famous far beyond this region, making television appearances including on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” In 2010, People magazine named him one of 30 “All-Stars Among Us” and he was honored at a Major League Baseball All-Star Game. The Foundation for a Better Life put him on billboards. Then-U.S. representative and now Ohio Gov. John Kasich put him in his book “Courage is Courageous.” Mr. Lexie shined his shoes, too, and got a $10 tip.
“He always could one-up me,” Mr. Gessner recalls of his friend, who carried in his shirt pocket a list of his regular customers.
“He was quite an inspirational human being,” says Dr. Samuel Kocoshis, medical director of the Intestinal Care Center and Small Intestinal Transplantation at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. When he worked at Children’s in the 1980s and 1990s, his oxfords had a standing Friday date with Albert.
“He wasn’t a minute early or a minute late,” said Dr. Kocoshis. “Though he had learning disabilities, he really was a wizard with numbers” and would hold court on everything from sports to politics during lunches with the CEO and doctors. “I think in many ways he really taught us what our ultimate goal was and that was to help children.”
Upon his retirement, Mr. Lexie told the Post-Gazette, “I wanted to see the kids get well, to see they got well and got better and things like that. ... I made myself happy.”
In 2012, his biography, “Albert’s Kids: The Heroic Work of Shining Shoes for Sick Children,” was published by the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation. The book is still available for a donation to the foundation, which now honors other extraordinary volunteers with the Albert Lexie Award.
The hospital sent out a news release about Mr. Lexie’s death, and sent to its employees a tribute video that thanked him for “touching the lives of millions.”
Mr. Gessner said the hospital community is sad, “but we have such fond memories of Albert and we know his legacy is going to live on.”
He noted, “He’s a perfect example of how just small, incremental acts of kindness can have a really significant impact over time.”
Mr. Lexie had been ill recently and was living at Davenport Hall, an assisted-living facility in Charleroi. His mother, sister and two brothers died before him. His niece and caretaker, Stephanie Davis, could not be reached.
Visitation is from 1 to 3 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Rhome Funeral Home Inc., 1209 Grand Blvd., Monessen. The funeral will be held there at 10:30 a.m. Friday, with interment to follow at Monessen’s Grandview Cemetery.
Bob Batz Jr.: bbatz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1930 and on Twitter @bobbatzjr.
First Published: October 16, 2018, 9:24 p.m.
Updated: October 17, 2018, 2:20 a.m.
