Alice Keck Whitfield passed away on February 1, 2025 in Baltimore City, Maryland. She became a resident of Crownsville, Maryland in 1992 but had been in nursing care for many years in Baltimore, Baltimore County, and Anne Arundel County. She was sixty-three years old.

Alice was born in Seattle, Washington in 1961 and was the youngest of five children. She later lived in Massachusetts and Connecticut as a child before her family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Alice was always a New Englander at heart, despite spending many of her formative years in the South. One postcard from Alice to a friend in Massachusetts survives from the days her family moved, noting with chagrin, "I can't believe I live in Oklahoma."

During Alice’s early childhood, her family was very prosperous until her father was overtaken by illness. Then their circumstances changed. Alice was lucky to have knowledgable support from her family and academic guidance from excellent teachers at the historically Black, magnet high school she attended in Tulsa - Booker T. Washington.

Alice moved back to Massachusetts to attend Simmons College in Boston as soon as she could find the means to do so. She self-financed her education through scholarships, loans, and hard work. During high school and college, Alice held jobs in a nursing home kitchen, a restaurant, a bar, a library, and a bank. At the time she fulfilled the requirements for her college major in economics, Alice was an intern at the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, DC, across a narrow street from the White House.

Alice graduated from Simmons in 1983. She began working in government studies at The Brookings Institution in Washington, DC and later in environmental policy consulting at ICF Incorporated in Fairfax, Virginia. Alice became a shareholder/owner and a director of Quality Control Systems Corporation in Arlington, Virginia in 1987. She served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for twenty-seven years, from 1990 until 2017.

Alice spent much of her professional career in litigation support and data science. Her research was cited in many national media outlets such as The New York Times, The Safety Record, The Washington Post, FairWarning, NBC Nightly News, and Good Morning America. Her publications include an invited presentation to the National Transportation Safety Board as well as research published in Injury Prevention, the official journal of the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research.

Alice made notable use of the federal Freedom of Information Act for the benefit of consumers. She approved legal actions for Quality Control Systems that ultimately forced settlements with the government in 2008 and 2018. These settlements required disclosures of information about motor vehicle crashes, deaths, and injuries that had been kept secret from the public for years at the behest of vehicle and vehicle equipment manufacturers. The availability on the Internet of "early warning" data about motor vehicle casualties as well as data about the safety of certain automated driving systems has been of importance to journalists and researchers around the world. Together with consumer advocates at Safety Research and Strategies and also at Public Citizen, Alice played a significant role in bringing this information to light.

Alice's range of interests was breathtaking. A fluent speaker of French and Mandarin Chinese, she was a committed volunteer for the Rotary Club of Parole (Annapolis) as well as Books for International Goodwill. She was also a mentor to new entrepreneurs with the Service Corps of Retired Executives of Southern Maryland. For many years Alice volunteered at the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall and pinch-hit as an usher at the Folger Theatre of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Much of Alice's volunteer and professional work was devoted to children. She was a troop co-leader in the Girl Scouts of the USA and was a lifetime member. She also contributed to the 4-H community through the Virginia Cooperative Extension service.

Alice enjoyed participating in competitive sports (the Annapolis Rowing Club and National Mall softball), percussive dance performance (The Stump Jumpers), singing (at The New England Conservatory of Music, Simmons College, and Baldwin Memorial United Methodist Church in Millersville, Maryland) and jazz. While an active member of Baldwin Memorial, she contributed to many charitable projects, dramatic plays, as well as community development efforts in South Dakota's Indian Country. Starting from her time in Oklahoma, Alice maintained a strong interest in Native American affairs and Indigenous culture throughout her life.

Alice liked to travel. In 1985-1986 she circled the globe, starting in and returning to Cape Cod, Massachusetts by heading generally west. The trip included a stop in Oklahoma long enough to get married and a nine month sojourn in Asia. Before and after going around the world, she made frequent trips to Europe and also single visits to South America and South Africa. Alice had a special love for Provence.

Alice enjoyed travel on the water: Alaska's Inside Passage, the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho (by oared dory and kayak), the Colorado River through Grand Canyon (twice by oared dory and kayak), and across the Atlantic Ocean (San Juan to Southampton). Her own vessels included an often-used Old Town canoe for flat- and white-water paddling as well as an Alden Ocean Shell, the Alice Gale, for rowing on her tidal home waters of the Chesapeake Bay - Plum Creek and the Severn River.

If music and travel were enjoyable hobbies for Alice, cooking was a life-long passion. She baked her first cupcake at age five in a Suzy Bake Oven, heated by two 100-watt incandescent light bulbs. She took great joy in hosting family holiday dinners and parties including friends and co-workers. Alice undertook formal training at the Chinese Cooking Institute (傅培梅) while living in Taiwan. It has been estimated that she cooked more than ten thousand meals for her family while she had her own kitchen. (And it is estimated that her family cleaned up and did the dishes an equal number of times.) Her baking received numerous prizes at county fairs in Virginia and Maryland over several decades.

Alice's working career was cut short by illness in 2017 when she was 55 years old. Her life changed direction away from work and home to long-term nursing care. She survived the worst of the COVID pandemic in 2020 through the selfless and heroic support of many caregivers. Her family and friends are grateful for every act of help and kindness she received during her very long illness.