Meetings with Remarkable People

September 20, 2023

George Fountain Cox was born in 1930, the son of poor sharecropper parents in Clinton, South Carolina. He told the story many times of being able to see the ground between the floorboards of their little wooden house. There was no running water or electricity until he was in his teens. Though they technically lived in town, the Cox family had chickens and a cow in the backyard.

He went to grammar and high school in Clinton, where he played football and got good grades. His mother was mentally ill and physically abused George. George said, “My mother was not warm or loving; I felt sorry for my father. I feared my mother and, as a child, hated her.” He loved to go with his father to the nearby river, where he’d hunt for arrowheads. His father taught him how to dive down into the river and, in one breath, reach into crevices for fish and pull them up for dinner.

Annette, his wife, and George worked to put him through Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. After several stints of being a “preacher” in various churches, George was disillusioned. He’d grown away from the punitive God he’d been taught about as a youth. So, he learned to speak Japanese and prepared to be a missionary.

Then, after seven years in Japan with his wife and two daughters, he returned to the States to enter a Clinical Pastoral Education in Atlanta at Georgia Baptist Hospital. In this program, he learned the ropes of being a hospital chaplain and his psychological structures at the bottom of his anger.

George was a Chaplain at Regional Medical Center in Anniston, Alabama, where I met him in 1979. He was an excellent therapist and an involved Chaplain. Countless people received strength and hope from him over the twenty-five years he was there. One great sadness of his was his marriage, which had deteriorated beyond salvaging. He grieved over having to divorce. But he could no longer remain married with integrity after realizing that he and Annette lived in two different and untouchable worlds.

He was an outstanding watercolor painter whose work hung in several well-known galleries. He traveled in his later years and privately counseled people in his home after his retirement. His life was a journey into consciousness. He saw himself realistically and cared so deeply for people that I often saw tears in his eyes when talking with others about their issues.

One summer, he drove Lark and me to Clinton, where we saw his house and school and strolled the river banks looking for arrowheads just as he did as a child. We visited his parents’ graves and met his sweet sister Thelma. This was his last time to go home. His story was about a man coming from unconsciousness and poverty to consciousness and abundance. Remarkable.

Lark and I owe George a debt of gratitude for his walking with us through hard times. When the remarkable man was dying, he was alone one night. His hospice nurse had to leave unexpectedly. At about 2:00 a.m., the phone rang and it was George. He said, “Would you come and sit with me?” His voice told me it took all he could do to call and ask (He identified as an Ego Type Two). But he did call, and that request was a gift I will cherish for the rest of my life.

Inquiry: About what story is your life?

Dear God,

There is no adequate “thank you” for this remarkable gift.

Amen.

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