Shoe-shiner donated $200K to hospital
Albert Lexie, a part-time shoe-shiner who donated more than US$200,000 in tips to a Pittsburgh children’s hospital, has died of an undisclosed health condition.
WHO WAS ALBERT LEXIE?
Lexie was born in 1942 in a housing project and at age 15 built a shoeshine box in high school shop class. He never got further than Grade 8, according to the Pittsburgh PostGazette, but would haul his wooden shoeshine box to businesses up and down the Mon Valley in Pittsburgh. Then, from 1982 to 2013 — every Tuesday and Thursday — he would leave his home at 5:50 a.m., and take several buses so he could arrive at exactly 7:25 a.m. at the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
WHAT DID HE DO?
“At UPMC Children’s Hospital he made shoes sparkle for $3 a shine,” said a release from the hospital Wednesday.
But he would donate any tips to the hospital’s Free Care Fund — or “my kids,” as Lexie liked to say.
“I wanted to see the kids get well, to see they got well and got better and things like that . ... I made myself happy,” he told the Post-Gazette when he retired.
WAS HE HONOURED FOR HIS DONATIONS?
Among several awards, he was given the Outstanding Philanthropist Award by the Association of Fundraising Professionals in 2001 and was later added to the Hall of Fame for Caring Americans in Washington, D.C.
Children’s hospital president Chris Gessner said Lexie was an “inspiration for us all.”
Dr. Samuel Kocoshis, who worked at Children’s in the 1980s and ’90s, told the Post-Gazette his oxford shoes had a standing Friday date with Lexie. “He was quite an inspirational human being,” he told the paper. “He wasn’t a minute early or a minute late. 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.”
HOW MUCH DID HE RAISE?
He donated more than US$200,000. “What makes this gesture so awe-inspiring is that Mr. Lexie only earned about $10,000 a year,” said the hospital.