Deceased March 17, 2015

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In Memory

Henry Cox died of cancer of the esophagus at New York‑Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center on March 17 at 9:06 a.m. after two weeks in intensive care. He was born in Terre Haute, Ind., but I'm sure if he were asked, he would have happily affirmed that he was a Brooklynite. He loved the diversity of his neighborhood; he loved the small town aspect of where he lived—the shopkeepers he was familiar with, the stories he heard, the fact that every day the main streets let him encounter a wide spectrum of Americans.

His great-grandfather, who had owned a brewery, had been friends with Eugene Debs. His father was a noted American artist; his uncle, a vice-president of the Mellon Bank. He grew up in one of the more affluent families in Terre Haute with its proprieties and eccentric aunts and with a mother who respected integrity, discipline, precision of mind and industry—four qualities he never lost.

From Terre Haute, he was sent to St. Paul's in New Hampshire, and he always regarded St. Paul's (and not Amherst) as the place where he was "educated." Amherst taught him the language of art criticism. In Amherst, we became good friends—a friendship that would last nearly 50 years, until I was, as he told me on our last meeting, his oldest friend.

Over the years, I admired him more and more. He always had an extraordinary eye for detail and a refined aesthetic sense. And he was an original. He could never be put into any school. After Amherst, he moved into a townhouse in Brooklyn Heights and married his high school sweetheart. In the beginning, many things went well. He worked as a photographer in black and white. He had a fantastic eye and remarkable patience, and using both virtues, he won a national photography prize. He would continue as a portrait photographer, and he made many lovely, unsentimental portraits.

But as the years passed, his life was touched by tragedy. His oldest, handsome, charming and often witty son Theodore was diagnosed as bipolar, and Theodore died when still a teenager. His second son, Louis, had problems with substance abuse. His marriage fell apart, so that Henry was left alone to cope. And cope he did. He proved himself remarkably resilient; loyal, faithful and compassionate toward his only remaining son who pulled himself out of addiction.

Five years ago, Henry discovered he had cancer of the esophagus. He always regarded himself as having been saved, since esophagus cancer is usually deadly. The last time I saw him, less than a year ago, he had just come back from an examination and was optimistic, although, in retrospect, he must have known his time was limited. He walked with a glass crowned cane and had noticeably less energy than previously. We sat as we often did on his back porch overlooking his garden and reminisced about our years together and our current lives.

He was brave, determined, always a host, always discriminating. He was thinking of turning more and more to writing. He had a succinct, elegant and punctilious style with turns of phrases that caught you up quick, the same way when looking at a painting, he would point out something you had somehow missed or make a striking, and strikingly profound observation with his rasping, Henry voice.

Still, when I take an especially good photo or try to crop one (admittedly on my cell phone), I think, what would Henry think? I loved him deeply and will miss him very much.

Michael Greenberg '69