Charles P. (Chappie) Fox, 90, driving force behind famed Circus World Museum, founder of annual Great Circus Parade
Hoodude
The Capital Times
http://www.madison.com/captimes/news/stories/56738.php
The man who was the driving force behind the famed Circus World Museum
in Baraboo and who made the circus come alive for millions of people
in Wisconsin and the nation has died.
Charles P. Fox, known far and wide as Chappie, 90, died Friday at St.
Clare nursing home in Baraboo after a long illness. He was 90.
A funeral will be held at noon Thursday at St. Joseph's Catholic
Church in Baraboo. Visitation will be at the church from 6 to 8 p.m.
Wednesday.
Fox was born in Milwaukee and his early affinity for horses, trains
and circuses led him to start, and then become executive director of,
the Circus World Museum in 1960.
It is largely due to his persistence and perseverance - to say nothing
of his incredible ability to talk people out of treasured possessions
- that the Circus museum has grown from two buildings, a beautiful old
circus bandwagon named Columbia, a few handbills and some artifacts in
its initial days to what now encompasses 44 structures on 63 acres,
with eight buildings that are national historic landmarks, and more
than 362 circus wagons, trucks and tractors and 54 railroad cars.
Fox was also the founder of the widely loved annual summer Great
Circus Parade in Milwaukee, which, its promoters say, is the single
biggest spectator event in the state each year. The brightly colored
and meticulously restored circus wagons, which are the hit of the
parade, spend the preceding days on flatbed train cars traveling a
circuitous route through much of southern Wisconsin, to the delight of
onlookers along the way.
Despite his frail health brought on by a stroke in 1997, Fox was able
to ride the circus train when it left Baraboo for Milwaukee this
summer and was at the parade, said his nephew, William Fox.
As if the accomplishments of the museum and parade were not enough,
Fox authored more than two dozen books, including numerous books on
the circus as well as children's books featuring his own photos of
animals.
"He's really the guy who almost single-handedly built the Circus World
Museum to what it is today, a world class operation," Blake Kellogg, a
retired journalist and teacher who first met Fox in 1960, said in an
interview Thursday. "The library, the archives, the train, the wagons,
the buildings, it is all there because of him."
Fox seemed destined from his childhood to spend much of his life amid
the circus. He had a love of horses and spent countless hours on
Milwaukee's east side in his youth taking pictures of draft horses,
but especially those involved in the moving and setting up of
circuses. He was more excited, he once said, about the logistics of
the circus than the performances.
But he also had to make money, and so he was a salesman for a company
that sold train parts to railroads. On the side, he wrote books about
the circus and his wildlife books for kids. It was while traveling
many weekends to Baraboo, doing research on a book about the Ringling
brothers, that the seeds were planted for the Circus World Museum.
In Baraboo, Fox met John M. Kelley, a retired lawyer who had worked
for years as the attorney for the Ringling Brothers and the Ringling
Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, perhaps the nation's best known
circus.
Kelley often bemoaned the fact that Baraboo had no museum dedicated to
its native sons the Ringling brothers or to circuses generally.
"Chappie helped John raise the money," said Kellogg, who has been
involved with Fox and the circus museum efforts since he went to
Baraboo one day in 1960 to do a television story on the fledgling
museum.
After becoming director of the museum, Fox traveled near and far to
find circus wagons, Kellogg said. "He personally collected over 150
beautiful wagons. He found them in warehouses, pastures, barns, all
over the country. And with no budget and no support, he got them."
"He was persistent, he was relentless, he was charming," said longtime
friend George Cutlip. "He was always what he needed to be to get
things done." Cutlip delights in telling the story of Fox's first day
on the job as executive director of the museum.
After digging past a snowbank to get into the rundown building that
passed as museum headquarters, Fox found little to keep him occupied,
Cutlip said. At noon he decided to trudge downtown for lunch, in hopes
of meeting some locals. He ran into Baraboo's mayor and promptly
introduced himself. The mayor was gracious enough to mumble something
about helping any way he could, and Fox immediately replied, "Get me
an office."
By the next day he was running the museum from a desk in an office in
City Hall.
"He could charm the birds out of the trees," Cutlip said.
It was not only in this country that Fox scrounged for museum items.
In one famous incident he was chatting in 1967 with a man who had
served as a civilian with the Army in England in World War II when the
man mentioned he saw some old circus wagons on a farm outside of
London. Fox determined the wagons must have come from the Fossett
Circus and he went to England, where he met and cajoled the family
into donating the old wagons, which dated to before World War I, to
the Circus World Museum.
Among the wagons was a famous telescoping wagon, three tiers high with
the top tiers able to retract into the lower one to make passage under
low bridges in England.
Transportation of those wondrous wagons might have been a problem, but
he went to Milwaukee and talked Robert Uihlein, of the Schlitz Brewing
company, into paying the freight.
The relationship with Uihlein had been forged earlier when, in 1962,
Fox was trying to find a sponsor for a large circus parade. After
being rejected by more than a dozen corporations and companies, Fox
met with Milwaukee public relations guru Ben Barkin to discuss the
parade.
Schlitz was one of Barkin's clients and Barkin, after listening to
Fox, agreed to introduce Fox to Uihlein. The two hit it off and
Schlitz became the parade's sponsor for its first 10 years. Barkin and
Fox, meanwhile, became fast friends who took great delight in coming
up with new ideas for the parade each year, including an incredible
"40 horse hitch" to draw a circus wagon.
In 1972 Fox left Baraboo and the Circus World Museum to head up a
circus operation for the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey company
in Florida. "It's like giving up my own son," he said as he left for
Florida.
But in about 10 years Fox and his wife, Sophie, returned to Baraboo.
"This is a beautiful state," Fox said upon his return to Wisconsin.
"Florida is for old people and their parents."
The parade, which had ended in 1973, was resumed in 1985 and is still
held annually, a lasting memorial to both Fox and Barkin.
Fox was named to the board of the Wisconsin Historical Society, which
is the owner of the Circus World Museum. He and Kellogg were both
involved in a fight in the 1980s to change the management of the
facility, which had seen dwindling attendance, and he had kept
involved in some form or another since then.
When he was honored at a banquet in Baraboo in 1989, Fox
characteristically spread the praise from himself to those who worked
at the museum. "This is the team," he said, gesturing to the staff.
"They did everything that everybody said I did."
But there was also a plaque unveiled that night, later placed on the
museum grounds, that summed up in a simple manner what Fox meant to
Baraboo, Milwaukee, the state and the nation.
"America's most knowledgeable authority on the circus. Under his
direction this museum has grown into one of the nation's most
prestigious attractions.
"Through his creating and staging, the famous Milwaukee Circus Parade
has become one of the great spectacles of America."
Hyfler/Rosner
A very good obit from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
'Chappie' Fox dies at age 90
America's ringmaster steps out of the spotlight
By JACKIE LOOHAUIS and AMY RABIDEAU SILVERS
jloo...@journalsentinel.com
Last Updated: Sept. 12, 2003
If Ben Barkin earned a place in the circus world as a promoter, it was only
because a man named "Chappie" Fox gave him something to parade.
Charles P. Fox - always better known by his nickname - earned a reputation
as one of the world's foremost authorities on all things circus. He turned a
nearly non-existent Circus World Museum into a state treasure, putting
Baraboo on the map in the process.
And he was the one who came to Barkin, trademark fedora in hand, looking for
help with his dream of a Great Circus Parade.
The rest became part of circus history.
Fox died of heart disease early Friday at a Baraboo nursing home. He was 90.
Even as his health began to fail, Fox was at the parade. He rode the Circus
Train into town in July, watching the entire parade from the reviewing stand
and his wheelchair.
"He had the heart of a lion," said Jack McKeithan, co-chairman of the Great
Circus Parade. "That intense interest in people and life and the circus was
the driving force to sustain him all these years.
"His every thought in his last days was about continuing to provide the fun
and the entertainment of the circus and the parade. He said just the other
day, 'Here are some ideas for next year's parade.' "
In 1960, Fox took charge of the circus museum at the Ringling Bros.' winter
quarters in Baraboo. The museum then consisted of three broken-down wagons
and several rundown camel and elephant barns.
Already a big top expert and published author - eventually he wrote more
than 30 books, many about circus subjects - Fox knew where to look for more
old wagons.
With gifts for promotion and for begging, he used his research to gather
memorabilia from across the nation.
"It was just a matter of convincing the owners that our museum was the place
for those wagons to be," he later recalled.
He had about 25 wagons in 1963 when he and Barkin, a public relations man
who did work for the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co., persuaded brewery president
Robert A. Uihlein Jr. to bankroll a parade. The likes of such a parade had
not been seen in America since the 1920s.The modern version of the parade
has attractedhundreds of thousands of fans each year.
Fox's parades had the aura of authenticity. He instructed bands to play
their marches without "fancy orchestration."
"Make it sound lively, clear, exciting and old-fashioned," Fox directed.
Many wagons had been built in the late 1800s and early 1900s and belonged to
circuses run by P.T. Barnum, James Bailey and Ringling Bros.
He found some wagons rotting in fields, or owned by famous names such as
Walt Disney (the man) and Universal Studios in Hollywood. Fox traveled to
England to negotiate for 1890-era wagons from the Sir Robert Fossett circus.
Other fans donated circus rail cars. All were brought to the museum and
lovingly restored to the glory they had seen in the heyday of circuses.
"We were going to originally do it in Baraboo to promote the Circus World
Museum," Fox said of the parade in 2002. "I went to 12 major companies and
got a turn-down from all of them. . . . Then I was going to go to Schlitz
Brewing, but was told to talk to Ben Barkin first, because Schlitz was one
of his public relations accounts.
"Ben said, 'You'll have to put on the parade in Milwaukee to get the
crowds,' " said Fox, " 'because if all the people you expect to show up do
show up, you won't have enough toilets in Baraboo to take care of them.' "
Milwaukee's Great Circus Parade was born in 1963.
By 1972, when Fox left to become vice president and research director for
the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey entertainment park near Orlando,
Fla., the Circus World Museum had 211,000 visitors a year.
"Chappie Fox is, without question, America's most knowledgeable authority on
circuses and circus lore," said Irvin Feld, then president of the circus, as
Fox took the job in Florida.
Photography and horses
Fox was born in Milwaukee on May 27, 1913, the third of six children of
George and Mary Fox. His father was a surgeon and chief of staff at St.
Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee. His grandfather, Philip Fox, was the first
president of St. Mary's Hospital in Madison. It was that grandfather who
decided Charles Philip was too formal a name for a boy and combined them to
call him "Chap." That later morphed into "Chappie."
He was 5 when he contracted polio, requiring treatment in an iron lung.
Several operations over the next 20 years left him with a lifelong limp.
George Fox died of influenza when Chappie was 7, and the widowed Mary Fox
and her children moved to Madison, where the boy attended St. Patrick's
School. By then he had acquired an old box camera and had begun
photographing horses, his favorite animal, which led him to circuses and
circus parades.
St. Patrick's, in fact, was where Fox "promoted" his first parade. The year
was 1927.
"One day we were in class and suddenly I heard music coming over the hill,"
he recalled in 1999, delighting in the tale. "I knew what it was."
It was the 101-Ranch Real Wild West Show.
"The louder the music got, the itchier I got," Fox said. He made a beeline
for the door, but his teacher was quicker.
"I know where you're going," the Dominican nun declared. "And I think the
rest of the school should go, too."
"I was the hero for the day," said Fox.
The family moved to Milwaukee, where Fox graduated from Riverside High
School in 1932. The Great Depression ruled out college, so he began working
for Owen Gromme, chief taxidermist at the Milwaukee Public Museum. In later
years, the two would work together on wildlife displays and Gromme's book,
"The World of Owen Gromme," published in 1983.
In 1933, family friends offered Fox work at Prime Manufacturing, a railroad
supply firm. Though he was never excited about the job, he remained there
for 26 years, becoming sales and purchasing director.
Family life was far more interesting. He and his wife, Sophie, rented a
farmhouse and land in the Town of Oconomowoc, where they raised their
children and both domestic and wild animals.
"His whole life wasn't circus," said daughter Barbara Fox McKellar. "He had
a tremendous love of photography and wildlife preservation. Our home in
Oconomowoc was a wildlife preserve, and he won a conservation award for
that. We took in chipmunks and red-tailed hawks and raised them to
adulthood."
His work included a photographic record of a baby possum's life in his
mother's pouch. Chappie Fox photos began appearing in The Milwaukee Journal,
Life, Outdoor Life and National Geographic, and he wrote many books for
children.
His first book about the circus, "Circus Trains," was published in 1948.
"Circus Parades" followed, five years later.
Fox went to Baraboo in the early 1950s to research his third book, "A Ticket
to the Circus," a picture history of the Ringling Bros. There he met John
Kelley, who had been the circus' attorney.
All Kelley could talk about was his dream of building a circus museum, Fox
later said. Fox became interested.
When the museum incorporated in 1954, Fox was on the board of directors. The
Circus World Museum opened July 1, 1959, in one of the Ringling's old horse
barns, and was turned over to the state's historical society.
Little was done to develop or promote the museum. By late 1959, the
historical society board decided to hire a museum director, coincidentally
about the same time that a custom metal shop business started by Fox failed.
Fox began the museum job in January 1960, leading the Circus World Museum
into international prominence over the next 12 years.
He then worked for the Ringling park in Florida, until his retirement in
1977. He enjoyed that job but hated Florida, calling it "nothing but a big
sandbar with a lot of bugs."
He and his wife moved back to Baraboo in 1983 - and Fox was dismayed at what
he found at his old museum. Attendance was down to half of what it had been
when he left. His replacement was under fire for poor management, and
recently acquired wagons and rail cars were rusting and rotting away
outdoors. And a Schlitz brewery in decline had dropped its parade
sponsorship in 1973, leaving Milwaukee without a circus parade for more than
a decade.
Appointed to the state's historical society board, Fox helped pushed for a
state investigation of museum affairs. The director was ousted.
In 1985, with financing spearheaded by Barkin, the parade returned. While
Fox no longer directed the parade, he remained a guiding presence and even
provided color commentary on television.
"I always thought of Chappie as the boss of the roustabouts," said actor
Ernest Borgnine, who became Milwaukee's most famous clown at the Circus
Parade. "He was one of a kind, and we will miss him."
Circuses and cranes
Fox also was influential in another Baraboo institution, the International
Crane Foundation. He served as a founder in 1973 and was a longtime board
member.
By 1997, the Circus World Museum had 207 wagons and other historic vehicles.
It was also the year Fox began to experience serious health problems.
"Chap had a granite faith in the art of the possible," said William Fox, his
nephew and co-chairman of the Great Circus Parade. "And his whole life was
spent overcoming the impossible, all the way from polio as a child to the
energy behind the whole Circus World Museum and the Great Circus Parade,
even to the day of his death."
In 2002, Fox received the unusual honor of two awards by Wisconsin's
historical society. He was named an honorary fellow of the society, becoming
only the seventh person so honored for contributions to Wisconsin history
through scholarship. He also received a Historic Preservation Achievement
Award for his work to preserve the Ringling Bros. site in Baraboo.
Other tributes, even more appropriate for a circus man, came in 2000, as Fox
watched the parade with Barkin. It would be Barkin's last parade. He died
early the next year.
At the reviewing stand, the elephants turned toward Ben and Chappie, raising
their trunks in a majestic salute.
They say elephants don't forget, but neither will circus fans.
"Just look at all the people smiling along the street," Fox said, emotion
and laughter mixing, at one Circus Parade. "What I'm proud of is all the
people enjoying this."
Survivors include his wife, Sophie; daughter, Barbara Fox McKellar of
Denver; two grandchildren, Wick of Denver and Morgan of Alaska; nephews; and
nieces. A son, Peter, died in 1980.
Visitation will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at St. Joseph Catholic
Church, 304 East St., Baraboo. The funeral service will be held at noon
Thursday, also at the church. Private burial is planned.
The Kentucky Wizard
consultations with my Joint Chiefs of Staff, being briefed by members of my
Cabinet and telephone conversations with various world leaders, I have come
to the following conclusions:
>> "I always thought of Chappie as the boss of the roustabouts," said actor
>> Ernest Borgnine, who became Milwaukee's most famous clown at the Circus
>> Parade.
>
> Duly noted.
I'm guessing here, but I would say that Borgnine's participation in the
circus is due to the fact that he is a 32° Mason and also a Shriner, and is
most likely very active in the Shrine Circus in that area. You can see a pic
of Borgnine in his Shriner "Fez" here:
http://www.shrinershq.org/shrinersonly/membership/june00.html
The pic is at the bottom half of the page. Pictured with him is Frank
Stallone, Sly's brother. That scares me. ;-)~
--
© The Wiz ®
«¤»¥«¤»¥«¤»
MadCow57
Few people, including Masons, know that there is something beyond the 32nd
degree. It used to be that you could go on the House floor and spot several
lapel pins from this secret organization. Masons usually don't find out about
it until they get carried off in the middle of the night for the investiture.
The Kentucky Wizard
consultations with my Joint Chiefs of Staff, being briefed by members of my
Cabinet and telephone conversations with various world leaders, I have come
to the following conclusions:
No one gets carried off in the middle of the night, I can assure you, Cow. I
believe you are thinking of the Skull & Bones Fraternity, which G.H.W. Bush,
G.W. Bush, and Sen. John Kerry all are members of, and who does make 'night
calls' on its candidates. The only level, or Degree, above the 32° is that
of the 33°, of which there are two categories, that of an "Active 33° Mason"
and the other of an "Honorary 33° Mason". President Reagan was made an
"Honorary 33° Mason" while Roy Rogers was an "Active 33° Mason". Once a Man
has obtained the 32° however, he can then join other organizations that are
Masonic in theme, i.e. The Shriners and The Knights Templar. You can still
find quite a few Masons who aren't ashamed to wear their Masonic pins with
pride, but I guess politics play a large role as to whether someone in
Congress who is a Mason would want to make their affiliation so public.
Masonry is not a "secret society" as many have been led to believe, it is
however, a Fraternity that has "Secrets", which are part of the ceremonies,
and really aren't much of a secret anymore. A simple search online will
basically tell you everything you wanted, or not wanted, to know about the
Freemasons, which I am certainly proud to be a part of.
--
© The Wiz ®
«¤»¥«¤»¥«¤»
Cpl. O'Reilly
Kentucky Wizard <kentuck...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm guessing here, but I would say that Borgnine's participation in the
> circus is due to the fact that he is a 32° Mason and also a Shriner, and is
> most likely very active in the Shrine Circus in that area.
That's interesting, since Borgnine is Catholic and Catholics aren't
supposed to be Masons.
The Kentucky Wizard
consultations with my Joint Chiefs of Staff, being briefed by members of my
Cabinet and telephone conversations with various world leaders, I have come
to the following conclusions:
The Catholic church has condemned joining the Freemasons, but the Masonic
Order has never barred anyone from joining because they were Catholic. The
only requirements for a man to become a Mason is that they are at least 21
years of age, and believe in God. Their religious affiliation does not play
any role as to their acceptance in the Order. The Southern Baptist has also
spoken out about membership in the Freemasons, but they didn't really
condemn, nor condone Freemasonry, only to say that their members "shouldn't"
necessarily become Masons. Recently, the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of
New York, sent an invitation to New York's Governor George Pataki, to become
made a Mason "on sight", something that is rarely done, and is a invitation
sent only to those who are held in the highest esteem of others. He
immediately accepted the Grand Master's offer, and would do so when his
schedule permitted it. After he was reminded by someone that he was a Roman
Catholic, he then responded a second time to the Grand Master, respectfully
declining the offer to join. The Grand Master of New York has commented that
he regrets that the Governor has since declined to join, but the invitation
still stands if he ever decides to change his mind.
--
© The Wiz ®
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MadCow57
Nope. And it's obvious you don't know about the organization I was referring
to. But that's OK - most Masons don't either.
The Kentucky Wizard
consultations with my Joint Chiefs of Staff, being briefed by members of my
Cabinet and telephone conversations with various world leaders, I have come
to the following conclusions:
Well, perhaps you can enlighten us less educated humans as to what
organization you *are* talking about? Enquiring minds want to know.
--
© The Wiz ®
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MadCow57
You'll find out when they come for you in the middle of the night.
The Kentucky Wizard
consultations with my Joint Chiefs of Staff, being briefed by members of my
Cabinet and telephone conversations with various world leaders, I have come
to the following conclusions:
*Translation* I don't know, someone fed me that phony line, and I took the
bait.
--
© The Wiz ®
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MadCow57
>>*Translation* I don't know, someone fed me that phony line, and I took the
bait.<< -- Wiz
Translation: I was sworn to secrecy and am not about to unburden on a public
newsgroup.
The Kentucky Wizard
consultations with my Joint Chiefs of Staff, being briefed by members of my
Cabinet and telephone conversations with various world leaders, I have come
to the following conclusions:
Well then you can always write me privately, but don't send it to my hotmail
account, it's screwed up currently. You have my other email address, along
with everyone else. If you were sworn to secrecy, then it's not anything
related to the Masons. I have no problem keeping a secret, I just can't wait
to tell everyone else when I hear one. ;-)~
--
© The Wiz ®
«¤»¥«¤»¥«¤»
MadCow57
account, it's screwed up currently. You have my other email address, along
with everyone else. If you were sworn to secrecy, then it's not anything
related to the Masons. I have no problem keeping a secret, I just can't wait
I wrote you yesterday - to your hotmail address - and I don't have your other
address. Send it to me.
The Kentucky Wizard
consultations with my Joint Chiefs of Staff, being briefed by members of my
Cabinet and telephone conversations with various world leaders, I have come
to the following conclusions:
It's on the way.
--
© The Wiz ®
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