Editor's note: Below is a 2,000-word biography of Dr. Theodore W. Fox ’37 written by son Henry Fox. This piece was distributed in written form at Fox’s funeral last May and is reprinted here with minor changes. Dr. Theodore W. Fox ’37 was father to Bill Fox ’72 and grandfather to Derek Fox ’05 .
The Ted Few People Knew
By Henry Fox
Ted was the most humble of souls, and only a very good listener could know much about him. But there was much about him to make his family proud.
Theodore W. Fox was born Dec. 7, 1916 in Hartford, Conn. His parents were recent immigrants from villages in the dismal morass of Eastern Europe, where most Jews lived in the 19th century. They probably would have called it Poland; it is now in Ukraine. His father, Asher (later William), was a promising student in his small town cheder (Hebrew school) before joining a brother and brother-in-law in Hartford, where he worked as a bricklayer. Perhaps William would have prospered in the boom years of the Roaring Twenties, had his life not been cut very short by tuberculosis.
and his grandson Derek Fox ’05 in 2001.
Soon after Ted’s birth, William was sent to cure in the Catskills and then the Rockies, his life ending in April 1923 at the National Jewish Hospital in Denver. [Son Henry located the grave 55 years later in the Golden Hill Cemetery of the Yiddish-speaking Workman’s Circle and, at last, Ted arranged for a headstone.] Eventually Ted took William as a middle name, then shortened it to “W.”, so his son Bill could have the whole name.
By all accounts, Ted was an energetic and inquisitive little boy. (His granddaughters particularly love the story of the time he threw a cat off a tenement roof to see whether cats really always land on their feet.) But Ted’s mother, Bessie, had no good way to support a child on her own. Briefly, he was in an orphanage and then foster care.
Out of economic necessity, Bessie acceded to an arranged marriage to a tailor in Albany who had older children, two daughters and probably a son. Like Cinderella, Ted had evil stepsisters. They resented having two more mouths for their father to feed and showed no trace of sisterly love. Ted never mentioned them by name, so let’s call them Drizella and Anastasia. In 1929 came the Stock Market crash, a harbinger of harder times to come, and, a few weeks later, the luckless Ted’s bar mitvah. (The synagogue was Ohav Shalom, where grandsons Jared and Derek became bar mitzvah many years later. The parashah was Mikketz—same as Henry’s; the haftorah was First Chanukah—same as Henry’s and Zoe’s.)
Life went from bad to worse with the Great Depression, and the family lost their home. Ted learned to appreciate the resources that a state capital offered to a child with no money, including good libraries and—difficult though it is for us to believe—an armory where he learned to fire a rifle.
Ted dedicated himself to his studies, no doubt believing that academic accomplishment would lead to a more comfortable life. He excelled in all subjects except English—perhaps befitting a man of few words—and graduated at the top of the Class of 1933 at Albany High School. He later called it luck and pointed out that a better student moved away in the nick of time.
Historians would say that 1933 was one of the two worst years of the Depression. There was no money to send Ted away to college, so he chose nearby Union College, where he could do pre-med. He chose Union over RPI at a time when a Jewish engineer was an unemployed engineer.
Commuting an hour each way probably cost him the social experience that most of us associate with college, but it did not slow down his academic accomplishments. In 1937 (the other nadir year of the Great Depression) he graduated from Union summa cum laude in chemistry with the highest grades in his college class. That was the year that Union decided that the valedictory address should be given by the gentile with the highest grades, so that honor went to somebody else.
He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and his organic chemistry professor recommended him for Sigma Xi, the national science and engineering research society, but the request was vetoed by an anti-Semitic department chair. More importantly, he could not squeeze through the Jewish quota at Albany Medical College, notwithstanding their affiliation with Union College. There can be little doubt that Ted never forgot these indignities. Eventually he made amends with both institutions and became a loyal alumnus.
Jobs were scarce in 1937, so Ted went on to graduate school in chemistry and physics at the recently opened Duke University. He had probably never been south of Brooklyn, so one can only imagine the culture shock. His luck improved when his mother needed surgery back in Albany and the surgeon—some sort of Marcus Welby precursor—showed so much concern for his patient that he made sure that Albany Medical College accepted Ted in 1938.
Ted returned to Albany, where a friend’s brother, doubtlessly an angel in disguise, knocked on his door and told him that the National Council of Jewish Women was offering student loans to medical students. So his medical education was secure. His mother was taking in boarders—mostly state employees from New York City in search of a kosher home. (One of them surprised us all 45 years later by calling up and asking for Theodore Shaiman—he mistakenly used the surname of Ted’s stepfather. In their retirement years they became friends.)
On Ted’s 25th birthday, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, shaping the life of his entire generation. He finished his internship at Good Samaritan Hospital in Troy, N.Y., and could have stayed on. But he wanted to fight the Nazis so he joined the service. Cautious even in his patriotism, he thought a tour in the U.S. Navy would be safer than trench warfare. But the Navy rejected him for flat feet (inadequate for marching around those ships, it seemed) so the U.S. Army got him. They shipped him west, his troop train passing through Denver, where his father had died, and on to California. Ted thought he was on his way to the Philippines, to battle tropical disease and help Gen. MacArthur return. But the Army Way was to turn him around, to Boston and then over to France, three months after D-Day.
Fortunately, the war was winding down, and his biggest enemy was boredom. He got as far as Germany and waited a year to be shipped back. Meanwhile, his stepfather had died, so his mother moved back to Hartford, where her first husband’s relatives still lived.
Millions of ex-G.I.’s were looking for civilian jobs, doctors included. He took a desk job with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Hartford. There were residency openings in the new specialty of anesthesiology. (What a perfect job for the world’s most careful person.) Ted’s background in chemistry and physics, along with his diligence and attentiveness, served him well, and his retiring personality was no barrier to attending unconscious patients. He interviewed at the pre-eminent Bellevue Hospital, and might have been hired, had he said yes when asked whether he aspired to become a professor of anesthesiology. But his humility and honesty produced a negative response, and they suggested he would do well at the Bronx Veterans Affairs Hospital.
He did that Bronx residency and took the specialty qualification examinations in anesthesiology. Bellevue shouldn’t have worried. His written exam score was the highest in the Bronx, the highest in New York, and the highest in the United States. Not too surprisingly, his oral exam result was less outstanding.
While in the Bronx, he still returned to Hartford for his dental care. His hygienist had a friend in need of a date taller than herself, and thus he met his future wife, Sara. He thought her outgoing personality would make for a balanced ticket, and having studied 1930s psychology in college, he thought that her Ritvo genes would assure him intelligent children. Sara recognized his kindness, as well as his height, and things seemed to work out.
They married Sept. 19, 1948. They lived from 1949 to 1951 in Baltimore, where Bill was born, but Sara was appalled by the Civil War re-enactments, and they wanted to be closer to family.
In 1951 Ted became the first anesthesiologist at Peekskill (N.Y.) Hospital and went on to practice solo for years, a Herculean task. Days or nights off were few. Eventually, the eminent Paul Wood moved to Peekskill to help him out.
While in Peekskill, he became a leader of the First Hebrew Congregation, where his stamina during Yom Kippur Services did not escape notice. (His humble response was “there’s nothing else you’re supposed to do that day.”) Not wanting the relive the Depression, he didn’t buy a house until he could do it without a mortgage.
In 1959 there was a job opening in Hartford, and the whole family moved back, even after Henry told the realtor that he wanted to convey with the house. But the job in Hartford proved something of a mirage, and it was time to move again.
The surgeons in Peekskill begged Ted to come back, but he thought it would be awkward, and he also wanted to avoid the declining economy of the Hudson Valley. So, in 1961 he took a job at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, NJ, where he practiced until he retired in 1989. Not wanting to repeat the Hartford experience, the family stayed behind for a whole year, until the practice had been vetted, before moving to New Jersey. Ted had already bought a house in Fair Haven, as a temporary measure. But he lived there just over half his life, and he died in that house on April 21, 2008.
Even the house says a lot about Ted. It was the closest house to his hospital that was both affordable and in the preferred public school district. He expected Bill and Henry to take their studies seriously, to speak English properly, to observe the Jewish holidays, not to waste money or property, and to avoid germs. He lived that way himself.
For a professional who eventually achieved affluence, he desired remarkably little for himself. He did not care for expensive vacations, fancy restaurants or luxury cars. In his later years, he rarely went to a movie, for fear that he wouldn’t like it and his money would go to waste. Ever the child of the Depression, he was saving for a rainy day. And he just didn’t think he was entitled to much. In his retirement, he was content to read a book from the public library, or audit a course at Brookdale Community College. A one-bedroom condo in West Palm Beach, Fla. was his biggest indulgence.
Unfortunately, his later years were marked by painful health problems. A hip fracture reduced his last six years of work to part-time practice. In all, he had three hip operations.
At the age of 81 he was hit by a car. He was hospitalized for two months and required numerous surgical procedures. He recovered, but had difficulty walking for the rest of his life. He had more falls and more fractures, always working hard to recover, always energetically supported by Sara.
Ted was generous and devoted to relatives. He managed to stay in touch with cousins who grew up in Europe and in Cuba. He always had unlimited time to listen to his children or grandchildren. And he never forgot a friend. After he died, his family found an address book that he had maintained since the 1940s.
He wanted as little attention as possible. When he turned 90, he would not accept an aliyah at his synagogue. When he became seriously ill, he would not even tell his son, a doctor, until an emergency-room visit made it unavoidable. He asked that his grandchildren not be told of his illness and, on his deathbed, said he didn’t want to take up too much of his children’s time on the phone. When he decided he was too old for aggressive cancer treatment, he apologized to any family members who might feel deserted. He wouldn’t even have wanted to be the center of attention at his own funeral.
As his daughter-in-law Sarah said many times about Ted, “you couldn’t make him up.” But God did. And we feel blessed to have had him.