Everyone's life has a story. In "Lives," we tell some of those stories about North Shore people who have died recently. "Lives" runs Mondays in The Salem News.
BEVERLY — Throughout his life, James Fox Jr. was looking for an adventure, and it almost always involved the sea.
He grew up so close to the ocean in Revere that he could smell the salt air each day as a kid. But getting out into the water required persistence. He would be known by local fishermen there as "the kid around marina."
"He bummed every ride he possibly could on a fishing boat," said his daughter, Diane Denman of Beverly.
When he was 8, he built his own rowboat. Later in life he skippered a more significant vessel — the Friendship, a replica of the original 1797 merchant ship, now docked at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site.
"He always needed an adventure going on," said his other daughter, Leanne Smith of Salem.
He told them often: "I never said no to an adventure, I never said no to a dance."
Fox died Aug. 17 at Kaplan Family Hospice Home in Danvers following an eight-month battle with melanoma. He was 68.
Born May 27, 1942, he grew up in an apartment building across the street from Revere Beach.
His deeply religious parents sent him to Catholic high school, but he would never consider himself a religious man. He was spiritual, however, and he had a well-honed sense of humor.
In the weeks leading to his death, he made only one request for his funeral service: an open bar.
"He was a very intelligent, well-educated engineer, with an extremely well-presented sense of humor," Denman said. "I mean, he could tell a dirty joke to a nun and not get in trouble."
At a black-tie dinner, Fox would be the one with a rented tuxedo with Wile E. Coyote on it.
And he constantly poked fun at his bald head. While sailing, he typically wore a wig or a baseball cap that had long grey hair attached in a ponytail.
He met his wife, Judy (Steinberg) Fox, while still in grade school. He was 12 years old and she was 10. Judy was a friend's sister, and she often tagged along with the two boys. Soon they became childhood sweethearts.
They married shortly after he graduated from Mass. Maritime Academy in 1964.
They built a home in Salem and raised their daughters, not with an iron fist but using a more effective strategy.
"He always kind of gave you the look," Denman said, indicating that he was so disappointed.
"Then he just sent us to our room and then we got a lecture. And the lecture was so bad we'd say: 'Just hit us. Stop lecturing us. Take away any privilege for the next month,'" Smith quipped.
The look and the lecture didn't come often. Smith and Denman remember their father mostly as a man who was always there to listen and to offer advice when asked.
Of course, they learned to enjoy sailing at an early age, on weekly sailing trips. If, at times, they complained they'd rather just hang out with their friends, he'd remind them how fortunate they were.
"There are some kids sitting on a stoop right now in the hot sun who would kill to go out on a boat," he'd say, as his daughters moped in the back seat of the car.
To prove his point, he drove them to Boston one time so they could see people sitting on their front steps in the heat, presumably wishing they were sailing.
Fox continued in his caretaker role after his daughters were grown. His wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the mid-1990s, just before her 50th birthday.
She died seven years later. For six of those years, he cared for her at home.
"He kept her hand in his forever until the last year, and he finally gave in. He cried his eyes out and brought her to a nursing home and had them take over for the last year," Denman said. "But he didn't take her until she wouldn't know who she was or who he was."
Fox needed a change of scenery after his wife's death. He left for Florida, worked as a yacht broker, invested money in a marina, and dated a lot of "floozies," his daughters said. So they always kept their eyes open for a woman who wouldn't replace their mom, but fill the void in their dad's life.
They spotted Sandra Griffel and eyeballed her as the best match for their father. They couldn't wait to get them to chat. They eventually did and hit it off immediately.
Back in Salem, Fox became involved in the Friendship right from the design phase. He helped tow the partially completed Friendship down the Hudson River from Albany, N.Y., where it was built, and all the way to Salem.
It was last fall, on his last adventure, helping a friend deliver a yacht to Antigua, when Fox discovered the first signs of cancer. He had battled melanoma previously and knew what to look out for. But he delayed seeing a doctor, he told his daughter later, because he didn't want to miss out on the trip to Antigua.
Doctors told his daughters the cancer was already so advanced that the delay would not have mattered.
"I think he knew it was bad," Smith said. "He thought, 'This will be the last hurrah. I might as well do it before I can't.'"
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