Sam Fox was closing in on 80 and eyeing retirement when he was suddenly offered, of all things, a new job.
He was a few months from stepping down as president and CEO of Harbour Group, the manufacturing holding company he’d founded some three decades earlier and grown into an industrial giant. The succession plan called for Fox to relinquish the reins to one of his sons at the end of 2007.
Instead, President George W. Bush named Fox, a major Republican donor, to serve as U.S. ambassador to Belgium. After a bruising confirmation process, Bush withdrew Fox’s name, then appointed him to the post during a congressional recess. Despite the rocky start, Fox received accolades for his almost two years of ambassadorial service, including honors from Belgium.
Fox, whose late-in-life ambassadorship made him better known than his years of business success and vaunted philanthropy ever had, died Monday in St. Louis.
Funeral services will be held at 1:15 p.m. Dec. 8 at Congregation Temple Israel. Burial will be private. From 5 to 9 p.m. on the same day, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University will hold shiva.
Shortly after Fox and his wife, Marilyn Fox, whom he’d dubbed "Mrs. Ambassadorable” during their time in Belgium, returned to St. Louis, he jokingly shared plans for his next career change.
“I was talking to my good friend Dr. Bill Peck (of the Washington University Center for Health Policy) about me going back to medical school and becoming a brain surgeon,” he told the St. Louis Jewish Light.
The family’s fresh start
In 1913, Fox’s father fled the Ukraine, where he said killing Jews had become a national sport. He sailed from Belgium to the U.S. on the Red Star Line. A century later, Fox preserved his father’s harrowing story at the Red Star Line Museum, which opened in Antwerp, Belgium, in 2013.
The story includes his father’s recollection that a miracle occurred when he arrived at Ellis Island in New York.
“He walked in as Michel Fuks, a member of a despised minority,” Fox recalled in the museum’s oral history. “He walked out, thanks to the English translators at the immigration office, as Max Fox, a free man in a country that had declared, ‘All men are created equal.’”
Eventually, his father made his way to St. Louis, but he didn’t care for the big city. He bought a horse and ended up in Desloge, Missouri, because, he said, “that’s where the horse died.” His father worked at various jobs for seven years before he could afford to send for his wife and daughter.
Fox’s mother, Fejga “Fanny” Gold Fox, and his sister Esther arrived in 1921. The couple’s other four children would be born in America, Sam on May 9, 1929.
When he turned 15, Fox began working summers at a Del Monte factory in northern Illinois to earn money for college. He received free room and board and was allowed to can peas and corn as long as he could stay awake.
In 1947, he followed his brother Irwin to Washington University, which he later said deserved much of the credit for his success. He had felt isolated growing up in a small town that didn’t even have a library. “So when I got to college it was as if someone had flipped on a light switch,” Fox said.
A sister and her husband provided him with room and board, and he found several resourceful means to finance his education. Fox joined the legion of Fuller Brush men and sold used burlap bags from feed stores to construction contractors. When the Korean War created a steel shortage, Fox began salvaging the scarce metal from wrecking companies to sell.
He graduated with a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1951 and again followed Irwin, this time to Fox Industries in Madison, Ill. The company made powders for the chemical industry and operated a 50-acre industrial park and a warehouse.
Fox left the business for two years during the Korean War to serve as a seaman at the Naval Reserve Training Center at Lambert Field.
In 1953, he married Marilyn Widman.
Business success
In 1970, the Fox brothers sold the business to Diversified Industries of Clayton, and Fox joined Diversified as a vice president of corporate development.
Two years into his tenure, Fox learned that Diversified was bleeding money. The company’s owner, Ben Fixman, was forced to resign as president and chief executive and was replaced by Fox. The company was soon profitable again.
Fixman had remained as board chair, but in 1975, Diversified's board removed Fixman from that position. A bitter fight for control of the company ensued.
Fox lost.
But he quickly went back into business for himself, and year after year of success followed.
In 1976, he formed Harbour Group and began buying, expanding and selling small- and medium-size manufacturing companies. He was committed to investing only in companies that made tangible products like tools, and only in companies that appeared to be good prospects for growth.
In 1995, Fox described the strategy that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said had netted Harbour Group “a fortune.”
"We don't traffic in companies," Fox said. "We build companies. We covet our companies. They are not a piece of meat."
The company’s website notes that since 1976, Harbour Group has acquired 48 platform companies and completed 173 complementary acquisitions. The St. Louis Business Journal estimated the privately held company had 2019 revenue of $1.3 billion.
Party life
His involvement in national politics including serving as co-chairman of the Republican National Committee’s top fundraising board, resigning in 2010 after becoming frustrated by the party’s “self-inflicted wounds and missteps,” Politico reported.
The former chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition still made his voice heard about politics in his later years, even when it involved denouncing politicians he’d backed. Fox called on Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, to resign in 2018 when accusations surfaced that he’d been abusive to a woman he’d had an affair with.
Days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Fox withdrew his support from U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, who had voted against certifying two states’ electoral results in the 2020 election won by President Joe Biden. “Jews know all too well what happens when pluralistic democracy and the rule of law give way to mob rule," Fox told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Fox referred to his past backing of Hawley, which had included lobbying the Missouri Republican to run for the Senate in 2018 and encouraging other donors to hold onto their money until he entered the race, as a mistake. "He put the country on a path that has ended in five deaths and in disgrace for himself and for the nation," Fox said in a statement, the Missouri Independent reported, adding, “He can certainly forget about any support from me again.”
The ambassador
When the president of the United States came calling in 2006, Fox sped up his retirement date so he could become an ambassador.
The nomination was stymied by rancor over Fox’s $50,000 contribution to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential campaign. The group was credited with helping Bush defeat Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, in the election by claiming that Kerry did not earn his Vietnam War medals.
When Kerry questioned Fox’s judgment in making a contribution to the group during the confirmation hearing, national publications reported that Fox said he did so “because politically it's necessary if the other side's doing it.”
Fox said he played no part in crafting the Swift Boat message and called on Congress to ban or more carefully regulate such groups.
The president named Fox ambassador on April 5, 2007, while Congress was in recess.
When Bush left office, Fox returned to Harbour Group as board chairman and to many of his civic and cultural endeavors.
Philanthropic contributions
In 1986, Sam and Marilyn Fox had established the Fox Family Foundation, which donates millions of dollars annually to charitable organizations in St. Louis and around the world.
He was a major supporter of his alma mater, Washington University, and served as a trustee. The university opened the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts in 2006. Fox supported St. Louis University, as well. Former University President Lawrence Biondi expressed his gratitude that the Foxes “so fully understand St. Louis University's Jesuit mission to educate students to be remarkable global citizens." Both universities awarded honorary degrees to Fox.
Other organizations that enjoyed Fox’s leadership and beneficence included the Boy Scouts, the St. Louis Art Museum, the St. Louis Symphony, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, the St. Louis Science Center, Civic Progress and the United Way of Greater St. Louis.
He was named the St. Louis Variety Club's 2002 Man of the Year.
"I believe in what I call active-duty citizenship," Fox told the Horatio Alger Association.
He also was a believer in rejuvenating leisure time. A wine connoisseur and an avid outdoorsman, Fox traveled the world for wine auctions and to hunt and ski. He adhered to his famously early bedtimes, despite his hectic schedule.
His survivors include a daughter, Paméla Claman, of Israel; and two sons, Jeff Fox and Steve Fox, both of St. Louis. His wife of 70 years, Marilyn Wideman Fox, died in February. A son, Gregory Fox, died in 2016, and a daughter, Cheri Fox, died in September.
St. Louis Public Radio's Bob Cronin contributed to this story.