Miles of Smiles: Betty "Cookie Lady" Radics Shares Her Love of Life With Everyone

7/6/2021

This article was written by Steve Kornacki and originally appeared in the Key West Citizen on June 26, 2021.

Her eyes twinkle as Betty Radics leans in and says, “I’m everywhere, Honey!”

Then she chuckles, adding a knowing nod.

Radics, known as the “Cookie Lady” or “Miss Betty” to co-workers and patients at the Lower Keys Medical Center in Key West, makes it a point to “visit every patient, every day;” she’s there officially as a nutrition aide and unofficially as goodwill ambassador. She brings the same spunk and cheer to other charities and places she frequents.

“Search out people or die a lonely old person,” says Radics, nodding again.

“Miss Betty” is an inspiration in so many ways. She’s been declared both legally blind and legally dead, but nothing gets in her way when it comes to helping others and making you smile.

Turning 75 Sunday, she was born Alice Elizabeth Williams in a red-brick house at 423 Caroline St. to a mother, Mary Alice Williams, who died when Betty was 3 and a father, Capt. “Red” Williams, who also was born in that house, ran with Key West icon Capt. Tony Tarracino and was Ernest Hemingway’s first deep sea fishing captain.

And when Radics says she’s “everywhere,” she means strictly in this town. It wasn’t until the last decade that she’d ever been farther away than a few miles up the road in Boca Chica, which she notes as if it was some faraway place, the way others might mention Paris or Los Angeles.

However, she went to Miami about 10 years ago when her husband, Bobby Radics, needed medical attention, and was herself transported to Miami Beach in a helicopter Dec. 28, 2020, to save her life. Though, she adds that she did leave this life for a brief time during an operation connected to her second aneurysm.

“When I was up in Miami at Mount Sinai (Medical Center),” says Miss Betty, “they realized I had two brain aneurysms and two brain bleeds. They fixed one and called me back to fix the other, and as I was undergoing the second aneurysm (operation), I passed to the other side. And my husband was there, and my daddy, and my 28-pound Maine Coon cat. My husband reached down to kiss me, and said, ‘Not yet, baby.’ He went away and my daddy patted me on the head like he always did and kissed me on the forehead, and he disappeared.”

She giggles at that thought.

But then she says she became conscious once again, saying, “So, I knew I had great things ahead of me, and I didn’t give up. The doctors said if I hadn’t been as strong and healthy as I was, I would’ve never come off the table. I used to walk 10 miles every day. I spent three and a half months in Mount Sinai by myself.”

She returned to work in mid-May.

“When I got the call when she was actually going to return to work,” recalls Neil Ellerbee, director of nutritional food service for Morrison Healthcare, “I told the staff and everyone cheered. Right when she came back, people brought flowers in and we had balloons and a cake, and everyone was really, really glad she was back to work.

“We love her.”

Their difference-maker was back.

“She’s up on the floors talking to all the different patients,” says Ellerbee. “I get more and more comments about Miss Betty than I do any other team member. They tell me how much she’s helped them recover, and an essential part of recovery is mental. She’s doing whatever she can to help these patients get better and feel better real soon.

“The first time I met Miss Betty, I was like, ‘Wow. This lady is a character, full of life.’ She just loves to help people, and is truly, truly a joy to be around. It’s her personality and her passion for the people. She truly was put on this planet just to help other people.” Miss Betty says her return after a long hospital stay herself makes her that much more equipped to help: “I know what they’re going through. Now, I can say, ‘I’ve been there. I can relate to you.’ ”

She says some call her to schedule their surgeries around her schedule.

Growing Up on Duval

“It was just me, my father, the convent and Duval Street,” says Radics, referring to the hot spot for bars, restaurants and now tourists. The convent was at The Basilica of St. Mary Star of the Sea, the Catholic church that opened in 1905 on what is now Truman Avenue.

“With my upbringing on Duval Street, I never knew a stranger, never met a stranger. And my father was one of the most loving, compassionate people I have ever met. He had strict morals and was one of a kind. They compare my father and Capt. Tony …”

She smiles, shakes her head and adds the punchline: “My father had one wife, one child. Capt. Tony had mega wives and mega children. But they both loved the sea. They both loved to fish, and they loved the ocean here.

“And when my father passed in 1995 (at 87), I put his ashes in the Gulf Stream out there. So, every three years, he comes back to visit me. I know he’s here when he comes back. I put him out there because that’s where he lived.”

There’s a framed ink etching of Willford Williams, her father, on her kitchen wall. She called him “Papa” until the day he died.

“He was Mr. Hemingway’s very first captain,” says Miss Betty, referencing a pretty famous “Papa.” “I remember his stories about him, and met Mr. Hemingway in passing. But at that age, you don’t want to meet another old man. My father was old (laughter). But my father’s picture was in the Hemingway House as well. Yes, sir.

“My father and I were very close. He instilled the trust, respect and love. My father was the most important person in my life until I met my husband, and they knew each other, too. And my father approved of my husband.”

She met Robert George “Bobby” Radics just after he’d retired from the U.S. Navy in 1984, and it didn’t faze Miss Betty that, after flirting with Bobby, he told her he was gay.

“He held me just as close to him as he could hold me all night long,” she says, dropping her head back and smiling, as if reliving that moment. “As I got up the next morning to go to work, he put a house key by my purse and said I could move in any time I wanted. I would come home from work and he’d cook full-course meals every day. He instilled cooking in me, and the running joke was that when he died, I’d starve to death. He was my rock. He was my mind. He was my body, and he was my soul.”

They were married in 2000 on the beach at the Pier House.

She says: “I went to work at the Pier House (in the mid-1980s), which had just been acquired by Mr. Richard Jacobs, who owned the Cleveland Indians and Jacobs Field. He took an instant loving to me. Not liking, but loving.”

After all, to know “Miss Betty” is to love her.

She worked there for 23 years and discovered that she had 20/400 vision, meaning what she saw 20 feet away appeared as if it were 400 feet away.

“I had cataracts in both my eyes,” she says. “I could not see and didn’t even realize it.” Corrective surgery allowed her to see just fine with glasses.

She’s proud that she once was named Employee of the Year at the Pier House, a resort and spa which sits at the foot of Duval. She worked her way up to assistant executive housekeeper.

She sensed the need for change, though, and landed at Lower Keys Medical Center. She’s still there 18 years later.

“I also do the Relay for Life, and was the second in command for that at Lower Keys,” says Radics of the American Cancer Society charity function. “I baked all kinds of cookies and cakes and brownies. I had baskets full of it. Every Thursday, I would set up four tables in the lobby full of baked goods I made at my home. Doctors would come in and say, ‘Can I have this cupcake, Miss Betty?’ and throw a $100 bill in. Several of our doctors are like that.

“They all ask, ‘What kind of cookies do you have today lady?’ ”

Somebody one day started calling her the “Cookie Lady” and it stuck. An “Almond Joy cookie” that’s heavy on the coconut is her favorite.

She never remarried after her husband died in 2013, and hospital and charity work for AH Monroe, formerly AIDS Help (she was 2019 Unsung Hero in Monroe County), Committee on Temporary Shelter and the VFW became an even more important part of her life. She met “my chosen brother,” Mark Warmouth, and Mary Wheeler, “my chosen sister.”

Her expression becomes serious, and she says, “If you don’t have family, you have to choose people to be part of your life. With all these things I’ve done, I become very interested in people’s lives. You know, I have never met a stranger. They’re only strangers for five seconds, and five seconds is the blink of an eye. Once I meet you, you’re mine, if you want to be.”

Making People Smile

Still, for all the friends she’s known and all she’s accomplished, “Miss Betty” said she got to a point in early 2014, after “Bobby Boop,” as she called him, died, where she “was ready to live under the Cow Key Bridge.” Scott Pridgen, Executive Director of AH Monroe, stepped in and connected her to an efficiency apartment in Poinciana Royale, part of a low-income housing program.

“This was a miracle,” says Radics. “Finding this place and this place finding me, yeah, and me becoming such an intricate part of this property and the people that live here.”

But she continues holding dear the ones she’s loved most deeply, recalling for her visitor: “I called by husband Bobby Boop. I was Betty Boop, and the cat was Baby Boop.”

She chuckles at the memory of them.

Miss Betty says Capt. Tony and her father have been patients she’s tended to as well.

“A job is something you have to get up every day and go to,” she says. “What I do, this is a passion and a pleasure. What I do at that hospital is 100% passion and pleasure.”

What brings her the most pleasure?

Her eyes crinkle, her voice softens, and she says, “When people smile, and knowing that they’re genuine smiles, not a fake one.”

Those smiles are prompted by a “genuine” Key West treasure.

“That’s why I’m drawn to people,” she says.

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