James F. Fox, Jr.

Longtime Bellingham resident Jim Fox, of 2106 Young Street, died peacefully in his sleep in the wee hours of Wednesday, July 9 at the age of 83. Jim was born in Washington, DC, the elder son of James F and Ruth Fox, née Gary. His dad was a mechanical engineer and his mother a school teacher. Jim enjoyed a magical childhood in University Park, Maryland, where his father served as mayor for a time. He had many happy memories of his youth in Maryland, and of spending every summer with his mother’s family in North Carolina. At an early age, Jim had a strong interest in technology, and his later choice of career was strongly influenced by his father’s work for the Navy Department, which included designing the submarine nets that kept Hood Canal safe from enemy subs during WWII. After high school Jim attended the University of Maryland, where he studied engineering. Many of his fondest memories were of the adventures that he had as an active member of the U of M’s Terrapin Trail Club, where he was to form lifelong friendships. He and his fellow explorers were eager hikers, rock climbers, and cavers, and Jim always had a special fondness for the many trips he took to climb and cave in West Virginia. He would go on to hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine, an accomplishment that he later wrote about as the author of a chapter in a two-volume set of books about the AT.

After earning his degree from the University of Maryland in Civil Engineering, Jim joined the Peace Corps and again formed lifelong friendships with his Peace Corps colleagues as he worked through the 1960s in the Middle East and South Asia. During his time as a Rural Public Works Engineer in Iran, Jim fell in love with the people and culture that he was exposed to, and would go on to lecture later in life about the history of the region. His work took him to Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh and Nepal, where he surveyed the city of Kathmandu in designing a drainage system. He drove his Land Rover back and forth across all of southern Asia for Peace Corps projects and, though he later owned many, many vehicles, he would never be without a Land Rover for the rest of his life. During his Peace Corps years he carried on with his love of the outdoors, and climbed 18,600-ft Mt Damavand in Iran, the highest volcano in Asia.

Following his Peace Corps years, Jim drove his Land Rover back across the Middle East and Europe, shipping it to the States and driving out to Seattle in 1970. There he took graduate classes at the University of Washington and became very active in the anti-war movement. After two years at the UW, he followed some friends up to Bellingham, Washington in search of a summer job, and ended up in the small offices of startup engineering firm Anvil Corporation, where he would spend the next 32 years. Jim had made a good many friends in the Seattle peace movement and had years of adventuresome living in the Bellingham area, including squatting in an abandoned house with “fellow hippies” and living on Lummi Island and subsisting on salmon. He ended up buying land on the mountain overlooking Lake Whatcom and lived for a time in a tree house that he built on the property before finally ending up on a small farm on the Goodwin Road in Everson. He and his dog climbed to the summit of Mt Baker during these years, and the North Cascades remained important to him for the rest of his life.

Jim became interested in the growing use of computers in business and industry, and starting taking computer science classes at Western Washington University in Bellingham. During this time he built an Imsai 8080 computer, and returned for a time to take more advanced classes in computing at the University of Maryland. Although his engineering profession involved him with many projects in heavy industry in Washington and Alaska, he became the central driver of the computerization of Anvil’s team of engineers, installing and administering a DEC PDP-11 system that remained in use for decades. In 1980 he met Gail Chamblin, soon marrying and acquiring a new family with stepsons Anson and David. He obtained a private pilot’s license, bought a plane, and went on to spend the next 20 years as an active member of the Bellingham aviation community, serving as local president of both the Washington Pilots Association and Experimental Aircraft Association. He and Gail had many memorable flights to find the mythical “$100 hamburger” as pilots like to call their flights to get lunch at another airport. One memorable trip was a solo flight to attend the famous air show and fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Now divorced, Jim spent the early 90s focusing on his career, obtaining his Professional Engineer license before again traveling throughout India and Nepal. In 1995 he met Rosetta Sanz and again acquired a new family as he became “Papa Jim” to her daughters, Schehara and Crickette. As the new millennium dawned, Jim noted more physical effects of a familial form of muscular dystrophy, and became very active in a research study based at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore; he would remain extremely involved in the FSHMD support and research community for decades. He took this change as an opportunity to finally retire from Anvil Corporation, though continued as a private consulting engineer for several more years. Now free from obligations, he returned to traveling the globe, making several more trips around the world, primarily spending time in the Middle East and South Asia, but visiting all the continents. His stories of riding a motorcycle through busy cities in India were hair raising!

As his physical abilities declined, Jim became highly active with the local Democratic Party, and was proud to apply his many talents in support of political candidates, both local and national, as well as spending years helping to ensure the security and validity of local elections. He also spent increasing amounts of time in Maryland helping his younger brother, Charles, whose own health was declining. With Charles’ death in 2010, Jim spent the next five years going back and forth between Bellingham and Maryland, where he visited family members and old friends as he wound up his brother’s estate. Jim’s own health caught up with him as he battled a heart attack and several forms of cancer, but he stayed active and kept traveling, always planning his next trip and ready at the drop of a hat to set off across the US in one of his many vehicles.

Jim’s memory began to betray him, and he used his restless scientific mind to exercise his brain, writing programs to graph Pythagorean triples and to calculate prime square roots. Always a prolific note-taker, Jim had kept meticulous records of virtually every aspect of his entire life. Now, this became a tool to help him day-to-day. Though he eventually became dependent upon others to help him manage his affairs, Jim remained the charming, witty, good natured, curious man that he had always been. His life had been a series of wild adventures, wide-ranging interests, and a passionate hunger for new knowledge and experiences. His bookshelves contained volumes on calculus, anatomy, finance, political science, dentistry, woodworking, navigation, brewing, geotechnical engineering, astronomy, history...it went on and on. He spoke conversational Farsi and could get by in Arabic and Punjabi. There was never a television in his home, but he owned dozens of radios.

With a loving team of friends and neighbors he was able to remain in his own home far longer than would have otherwise been possible. Jim’s last months were filled with laughter and curiosity. He enjoyed reminiscing about his childhood, his family, his outdoor adventures, his Peace Corps years, flying, and his world travels. He carried intense curiosity about everything he encountered in life, and reveled in the richness of life’s experiences. Those who loved him are grateful for having had him in our lives, and will always cherish the warmest memories of his wit, his smile, his kindness, and of that special spark of life that he carried, always.

Jim’s family wishes to thank the amazing people who showed him so much love in supporting him during his last years, with special thanks to the Whatcom Council on Aging’s Meals on Wheels program and its wonderful volunteers, to Visiting Angels, with special and heartfelt thanks to Heather, to Whatcom Hospice, and with most affectionate gratitude to his wonderful neighbors: Wayne & Julie, Spence & Janie, Ranger & Will, and Beverly & Lucio.

Jim leaves behind his first cousins: Deborah Brogdan, Pamela Skillman, and Joseph Gary of North Carolina, Tippy Thibodeau and Noel Murphy of California, Marilyn Orbann of Colorado, Pat Arbogast of Arizona, and Branny Gary of Belgium, his stepson Anson Chamblin of Ferndale, Washington, honorary daughters Schehara Sanz of Tacoma and Crickette Sanz of St Louis, Missouri, and many, many dear friends. He was predeceased by his stepson, David Chamblin, and brother, Charles Fox. A celebration of Jim’s life will take place at the breakfast spot that he frequented for decades, Diamond Jim’s, in Bellingham on August 20 at 2 o’clock pm. To know Jim was to love him; we wish him well on the next phase of his cosmic adventure.