Colin Fox: Remembering my father, William Price Fox

Long-time USC professor and acclaimed author William Price Fox died on April 19. Between lovely obits here in The State, the Free Times and The New York Times, his life and work have been well covered. As his son I would like to offer a quick glimpse of the interior.

To call my father’s life full is an understatement. He would love nothing better than to be remembered for raising hell with Roger Miller and Kris Kristofferson, getting sued for slander by the First Baptist Church (unsuccessfully), and staging his third marriage at the State Fair. My dad also loved his hometown with all his heart.

Columbia came alive like a character in his writing, making his time in L.A. and New York seem dull by comparison: childhood fun in spite of shocking poverty; sharing his too-young son’s first beers with James Dickey; building USC’s creative writing program; the gloriously sorry fate of an inveterate fan of Gamecocks football.

The source of this joy first provided safe haven and solace. My parents were living in Iowa in 1973 when they lost their 4-year-old son, Wyatt, to cancer. Unable to stand the pain of constant reminders, my dad was forced to move the family. Columbia was the only place he would countenance living, and despite an extended absence, the city quickly proved that home is the best place to heal.

Over the years, my father’s writing was called hilarious, pitch perfect, dark, original. But never beautiful. Like all genuinely humorous writers, he was on intimate terms with the sorrows of life. And like his peers, he kept that perspective hidden far from sight. The only time he let it slip came in a farewell letter to an Iowa newspaper, as he described an afternoon about a month before his little boy died, when “the hot air balloons were floating in across town just above the big oaks and the elms.”

“A rainbow colored beauty came sliding in towards our house and I decided that if Wyatt and I followed it he would get well again. I picked him up and strapped him in and with the top down we headed out directly underneath.

“Most of the time he could look up at the roaring colors above and he was, for the first time in a long time, and probably for the last time, really laughing.

“And then the balloon started drifting south. And as it did, suddenly a south road appeared that I could follow. The balloon drifted south for a while and then east for a while and each time it shifted, the roads kept shifting with it. It happened over and over again and as it did I really believed that everything--the balloon and the roads and the sun and Wyatt could and would hold on forever.”

I’ve always considered that one of the most beautiful passages in print but it hits even harder in the wake of my father’s passing. Now I like to think that he and my brother are up in that very same balloon keeping an eye on me and my loved ones.

Columbia

This story was originally published May 3, 2015 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Colin Fox: Remembering my father, William Price Fox."