Alicia Villarreal

Known to her friends as Alice, she graduated from Martin High School in Laredo and soon after, married the love of her life, Alejandro Nicolas Villarreal, who had left a year earlier to join the United States Air Force. Throughout her husband’s military career, she raised four children, David, Linda, Daniel and Lisa. She proudly embraced the military life and challenges of raising a family while moving every few years to various bases throughout Texas, Puerto Rico, and Kansas.

During the first few years of marriage, she was a stay-at-home mom. When Alex (that’s what his AF buddies called him) deployed to Greenland, Alice broke out of that paradigm and started working at F.W. Woolworth and Co. After the family was reassigned to Bergstrom AFB Austin, she embarked on a new career as a full-time civil service employee with the Internal Revenue Service. Later, the family moved to San Antonio and Alice transferred to Lackland AFB and finally Wilford Hall Medical Center where she devoted the next 20 years before retiring herself.

A few years after Alex’s retirement, he began experiencing vision problems and soon became blind. Alice rose to the challenge, becoming the breadwinner, chauffeur, care giver and mom. Gathering her inner strength, she continued to push herself and the rest of the family forward.

After retirement, not willing to sit at home, Alice jumped right into volunteering at Warm Springs Rehab. After Alex’s passing, she persevered in her search for a faith-based home and found it at Northwest Global Methodist Church.

A faithful believer in God and the power of prayer, Alice cherished her church and neighborhood communities. She volunteered as often as she could in church activities until it became too difficult to do so and continued to attend services as often as she could. She loved to minister, whether at home with loved ones and visitors or at other locations, wherever she felt the word of God was needed.

She was always reaching out to her neighbors, offering a kind word and sharing whatever she could. And when she needed help, her neighbors would be there to check in on her, bring her food and help with whatever she needed.

Alice was a mother of four, grandmother of 13, great-grandmother of 17 and great-great grandmother of four. She will be forever loved, remembered, and greatly missed by all who knew her and by the many lives she touched.