Barbara Cox Anthony, 84, media heiress and philanthropist dies
wazzzy
Barbara Cox Anthony, co-owner of Cox Enterprises and daughter of
Dayton Daily News founder and three-term Ohio governor James M. Cox,
has died at the age of 84.
Mrs. Anthony was chairman of Dayton Newspapers and a member of the Cox
Enterprises board of directors. Along with her sister Anne Cox
Chambers, Mrs. Anthony owned about half of Cox Enterprises and was
listed by Forbes magazine as the 17th richest American last year, with
assets of $12.6 billion.
Although Mrs. Anthony moved to Honolulu as a young woman, she was
still generous to many causes here, giving annual four-year
scholarships in her name to outstanding male and female graduating
seniors from Miami Valley high schools and donating $1.6 million over
the years to Children's Medical Center. In 2002, the hospital named
the new Cox Center for Children's Health in her honor.
"My mother was actively involved in our company through her leadership
on the Cox Enterprises board of directors. She inspired me both
personally and professionally," said James C. Kennedy, Cox Enterprises
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Anthony's son. "As we mourn
my mother's passing, we will always be grateful to her for her
leadership and constant support of Cox employees, their families and
our businesses," added Kennedy.
Mrs. Anthony also served as a member of the board of directors of the
Hawaii Preparatory Academy and was the only woman member of the board
of directors of the Santa Gertrudis Breeders International
Association. Mrs. Anthony was a director and founder of the Hawaii
School for Girls, a director of the Children's Hospital of Honolulu
and a director of the James M. Cox Foundation.
As Chairman of Hualalai Land Corporation, Mrs. Anthony oversaw all
aspects of a 7,500-acre ranch located on the slopes of Mt. Hualalai,
Hawaii. Ranch operations include cattle breeding, sale of cut flowers
and coffee production. Mrs. Anthony also was chairman of Winderadeen
Corporation, Canberra, Australia, a commercial operation of 2,500
breeding cows and a sponsor of Ducks Unlimited.
Mrs. Anthony grew up at Trailsend, the home Gov. Cox built on hill in
Kettering during World War I. Her father was a former schoolteacher
who bought the Dayton Daily News, a small paper at the time.
In 1920, he ran for president on the Democratic ticket with Franklin
D. Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the Navy before his nomination.
Cox lost the election to Warren G. Harding and never ran for office
again.
Mrs. Anthony's childhood was privileged and unusual for a native
Daytonian. Her father introduced her to powerful and important people
of the time.
As a teenager in 1940, she sat at Trailsend and listened as her father
discussed politics with Roosevelt, who then was president.
"The evening of the day he came," she recalled later, "I sat with
Daddy and the president and listened. It was wonderful. Daddy always
asked everybody questions, you know, and President Roosevelt was the
first person I ever heard who could answer all of them."
She also spent time at an old family farm in Jacksonburg in Butler
County, where weekends were filled with chores.
Drawn to Hawaii by its unspoiled beauty, she started a 7,500-acre
cattle ranch on the slopes of Mount Hualalai in 1960, which is now
home to top-quality purebred Santa Gertrudis and crossbred cattle
produced for market and for breeding.
In 1975, she diversified to include production of exotic African
protea flowers, which are cut and sold in Hawaii and throughout the
United States and Japan. In 1999, the ranch began growing high-
elevation, no-pesticide coffee and is one of the highest-producing
coffee farms in the Kona coffee belt area.
Mrs. Anthony also was a frequent visitor to Australia, where
Winderadeen Corp., which she chaired, operated two large commercial
ranches covering 30,000 acres with 2,500 breeding cows, as well as
sheep and purebred quarter horses. The Winderadeen Quarter Horse Stud
is one of Australia's best-known, producing multiple champions at the
Royal Sydney Show.
Australia was attractive as well because of family. Mrs. Anthony's
daughter, Blair, was married to an Australian, Simon Parry Okeden, and
lives there with their two sons. The ranching operation along the
Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales, begun in 1971, was an extension
of Anthony's long interest in cattle, horses and the environment.
Throughout her life, Mrs. Anthony was active athletically. She enjoyed
"competing in anything that resulted in someone being declared a
winner," Kennedy said. She especially enjoyed tennis and equestrian
events. She even competed in rodeos while spending summers at the
family ranch near Stanley, Idaho.
Once, when attending a convention of newspaper publishers, she soundly
defeated Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham on the tennis
court. Kennedy asked her why she was so tough on Graham. "Kay would
have done the same thing to me, if she could," Anthony told her son.
Anthony continued to play tennis until a hip replacement operation in
her late 70s. She continued snow skiing into her 80s.
For all her wealth, Mrs. Anthony lived without celebrity, able to fly
by private jet into the airport at Sydney, Australia, and walk
unnoticed past the paparazzi hoping for a shot of a more famous media
owner, Rupert Murdoch, who used the same jetport and parked nearby.
Her wealth consisted largely of trust holdings in an operating
company. She routinely gave half her income to charity, benefiting
causes that included a children's medical center in Dayton, cancer
research and university endowments.
Her donations were considerable and varied. She donated privately,
through a personal foundation and through the James M. Cox Jr.
Foundation. She preferred to make contributions quietly, often
anonymously, and wanted the extent of her charitable giving to remain
private.
Mrs. Anthony's interest in animals led her to become one of the
leading financial contributors to Colorado State University's work in
equine orthopedic research. Two $3 million gifts, one from Mrs.
Anthony and another through the James M. Cox Jr. Foundation, which she
chaired, funded research at the university in veterinary and human
health.
One gift endowed the Barbara Cox Anthony chair in equine orthopedic
research, which is for the benefit of horses as well as advanced human
orthopedic treatments. The other gift was to endow a chair in the
Animal Cancer Center, which likewise collaborates with health
foundations to address similar problems in humans.
"The veterinary scientists who are engaged in the kind of research
that will ultimately benefit both animal and human health are
deserving of our support," Mrs. Anthony said in endowing the chairs in
2002.
She also funded a chair at the University of Sydney.
In Hawaii, beneficiaries included the Aloha United Way, a state
organization of police officers, homeless shelters, animal rescue
groups, hospitals, the YMCA, the Salvation Army and the Honolulu
Academy of Arts. She was one of two founders and served for more than
two decades as chair of the board of trustees of La Pietra-Hawaii
School for Girls, which opened in 1964 as a college prep school for
the island's girls, about half of whom attended with financial aid
mostly paid for by Mrs. Anthony.
Mrs. Anthony was devoted to ranching and efforts to improve the stock
of quarter horses and Santa Gertrudis and other breeds of cattle. She
served on the boards of both the World Wildlife and Santa Gertrudis
Breeders International.
Mrs. Anthony is survived by her husband, her two children and five
grandchildren.
By Jim DeBrosse
Staff Writer
Monday, May 28, 2007