Alice Francis is a dancer who was an international competitor in the dancing scene of New York City. She died from complications resulting from an auto accident on the Long Island Sound, near Oyster Bay, New York on July 4, 1992. She was thirty-three years old and had been working as a dancer for many years but had always listed height as a handicap for her profession. At the time of her death, at the age of 32, she was listed as “tall”, despite being only 5′ 9″.
In fact, Alice had always presented herself as tall but in fact suffered from osteoporosis. The accident that killed her was her third accident in seven months. This was a result of the car she was driving, which ran into a guardrail and came to rest upside down, on its side, in front of a restaurant where Alice was working. This accident caused her to have neck pain and back problems for the next seven months and left her with a large scar in her backside. Because of this, her life was altered drastically by her sudden loss of height. After her death, her family discovered that her posture was not consistent with her height, even though she maintained the same posture for the last fourteen years of her life.
Her death was a great shock to her family and friends who expected Alice to maintain her usual stature even after her death. Her partner confirmed to the family that Alice was not as tall as she had previously presented. Alice’s death left her partner with a feeling of inadequacy. He felt that he had been wasting his time trying to bring her back to her normal height because she would not return to the figure he had seen in her earlier photographs.