LOWELL — There are soccer moms. Then there is Alice Ward.

Immortalized on screen by Melissa Leo’s Oscar-winning performance in The Fighter, Alice was both a mother and manager who left her mark on the boxing world when it was strictly a boys-only club.

“She was in there when there really weren’t any women at all,” said her son, retired champion boxer Micky Ward. “She was a pioneer of her time.”

Hospitalized since January, Alice Ward was taken off life support Tuesday and died peacefully about 1 a.m. yesterday at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Center in Cambridge. She was 79.

The picture Hollywood painted of Alice introduced the world to a tough-talking matriarch that took no guff. Make no mistake, said Micky, “my mother was tough, but she also had a heart of gold who would help anyone who needed her.”

Born on Aug. 2, 1931, Alice was the daughter of Thomas Greenhalge and Emma McMahon Greenhalge. She was the third oldest of eight kids and was raised in Lowell’s working-class Acre neighborhood.

Her dad was a construction worker and her mom labored in city factories.

“When being brought up in the Acre, you had to learn how to be a survivor the hard way,” explained Alice’s brother, Gerry Greenhalge. “It wasn’t guns and knives back then. It was fists.”

The kids in the neighborhood were scrappy, but nobody messed with Alice.

“They just knew not to,” Greenhalge said. “It was in her swagger, her actions, her mouth. She was street-smart and she was respected for it.”

Her upbringing was a crash course in boxing management 101. She could spot a con and a liar a mile away.

“And she knew how to handle him,” said Micky. “She was no pushover.”

During a February interview with The Sun, Alice’s oldest son, Dicky Eklund, said his mom always looked out for him and Micky inside the ropes and out.

Dicky was 21 when the family landed in London for his bout with British boxer Dave Green. It was 1979.

“We walked in the hotel room, and it was a real dive,” he said. “It smelled bad. And the sheets — you don’t even want to go there. These promoters, sometimes they’ll try to give you the worst they can to save a buck.”

Alice wasn’t going to stand for it. She got on the phone and demanded something better, or else they were getting back on the plane and going home.

“They ended up putting us in a nice hotel and apologized for the ‘mistake,’ ” Dicky said.

Not far behind his brother, Micky strapped on a pair of gloves. His epic rise from the working-class streets of Lowell to pro-boxing fame was Hollywood gold.

The Fighter barreled through this year’s movie awards season, earning seven Oscar nominations. Melissa Leo’s portrayal of Alice and Christian Bale’s Eklund were critics’ favorites.

She won a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild award and an Oscar.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Leo lashed out at one-sided reviews of her character.

“There’s no way in hell that when I played Alice Ward that I was playing a bad mother,” she said. “Quite the opposite. … She was holding the family together and getting careers for both of those boys, thank you very much.”

At first, Alice wasn’t crazy about the film, said Greenhalge.

“She warmed up to it eventually,” he said. “When you see the whole picture and put it all together, there’s a lot of positive in it. She was really all right with it in the end.”

Shortly after 4 p.m. yesterday, Micky had just gotten off the phone with Jackie Kallen, a publicist and boxing manager who’s been in the business for 26 years.

Kallen, who’s been dubbed the “First Lady of Boxing,” called Micky to offer her condolences, and to tell him that Alice opened a door for her and other women in the business.

“She said my mother was inspiring, and how strong she was to do what she did in a man’s world,” Micky said. “She was in there even before Jackie.”

When asked what advice his mom would give to him about being in the ring, Micky didn’t skip a beat.

“She’d tell me to get out of it,” he said. “She didn’t like me or Dicky fighting. She hated seeing us get hurt, but it’s what we wanted to do.”

So she stayed close by in case they needed her. Just like she did for all nine of her kids, and her grandson, Dicky Jr., whom she raised, Micky said.

“She just wanted everyone to get along, to try and do the best they can do,” he said. “Her heart was always in the right place.”

Calling hours are today from 4 to 8 p.m. at McDonough Funeral Home, 14 Highland St. in Lowell.