Dr. Stephen Carey Fox (November 1938–March 2026) grew up in Hagerstown, Indiana (renowned for Perfect Circle piston rings and somewhat less so for Welliver’s Smorgasbord). He was active in Boy Scouts, played high school football, and tackled the trumpet and French horn (as appropriate) in a variety of musical ensembles. He was fortunate to have capable, devoted teachers and community leaders. Throughout his life, Steve stayed in contact with many friends from those formative years.
Steve joined the Navy after graduation from DePauw University. At Pensacola, Florida, and Corpus Christi, Texas, he learned the duties and responsibilities of an officer, and mastered the mysteries of navigation.
He chose a fleet posting to Heavy Attack Squadron 13 (VAH-13) as a bombardier/navigator. Heavy Thirteen was land based at Whidbey Island, Washington, and at sea aboard the carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk (CVA-63). At that time, the Navy’s carrier groups and heavy attack squadrons existed for one purpose: if necessary, to bring nuclear war to America’s enemies. His squadron deployed twice (1962–1964) to the Western Pacific as part of America’s deterrent nuclear force.
His Navy experience stimulated his desire to teach the American story he believed had been forgotten, distorted, ignored or preempted by other disciplines; that decision opened the door to the rest of his life. Thereafter, his love of history, which had begun in childhood, he pursued in the classroom, in archives, in books and in the streets. Occasionally, sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally, he brushed up against history in the making (a thermonuclear blast in 1962, and the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example).
Steve’s career at Humboldt State University where he taught American history spanned four decades. His award-winning oral history publications, books and articles (1990–2009), helped to stimulate a wider interest across the country in the mostly unknown story of the relocation and internment of Italian and German Americans during World War II. He became the pre-eminent scholar in the field. His book, The Unknown Internment, won an American Book Award. Steve became life-long friends with several of the people he interviewed for his books, as well as with others working in the field.
In retirement, Steve turned to writing fiction for the pleasure of ‘telling lies for fun.’ He authored a dozen books on a variety of topics that interested him: crime, art history, collecting, climate change, the 2nd Amendment, espionage, the assassination attempt on Hitler, friendship, family, community social structures, immigration, and bicycling.
Steve loved bicycle touring, through which he made many friends at home and abroad. He saw much of Europe and made several crossings of the United States—one a solo trip from Oregon to Maine—in search of the American story he loved, slow and up close. He wanted not only to see and touch America but also to smell America. Every adventure refreshed his faith in the basic goodwill of humanity. He wrote of bicycle touring that it was, in essence, ‘hard miles between nice people.’
I never felt more alive or complete. My entire world—possessions, thoughts, everything I had or needed—existed within a bubble surrounding my bicycle and me.
Steve’s parents, Robert A. Fox and Dorothy Goodenough Fox, his brother, Peter L. Fox, and his wife of 50 years, Françoise Vermeirsch Fox, preceded him in death.
Surviving Steve are two sons from his marriage to Françoise: Kevin Robert Fox, his wife Diena Jauernig Fox, their daughter Kira, and their son Iain and his wife Talora; Christopher René Fox, his wife Kristin Hendrickson Fox, and their daughters Annika and Alyssa.
Steve’s beloved wife and revered colleague (Art History) at Humboldt State, Sheila McClure Ross, her daughter Mavis Molly McClure, and Sheila’s granddaughters Melina and Natalie Rodefer McClure, also survive.