Paterson, New Jersey
Paterson ( ) is the largest City (New Jersey), city in and the county seat of Passaic County, New Jersey, Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Boston University as an undergraduate before enrolling in
Boston University Law School
Boston University School of Law (Boston Law or BU Law) is the law school of Boston University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top law schools in the United States and considered an eli ...
. He gained the nickname "Just John Fox" after a professor asked him his name, to which he replied "John Fox." The professor replied by asking, "Just John Fox?" and Fox replied "Yes, just John Fox". In the late 1930s, he began working for the first gubernatorial campaign of Paul A. Dever, one of his law school classmates. During World War II, he served in the United States Navy and received a Bronze Star for his service in the invasion of the Marshall Islands and
Mariana Islands
The Mariana Islands (; also the Marianas; in Chamorro: ''Manislan Mariånas'') are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, betw ...
.
In 1948, he began a four-year stint as Dever's chief secretary, which ended in 1952 when then-Massachusetts Governor Dever appointed Fox as an associate judge on the Boston Municipal Court. In 1960, he was named a probate judge of the
Norfolk Probate Court
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the Nort ...
by Governor Foster Furcolo. He retired from the bench in 1973.
In the early 1960s, he fought, ultimately successfully, for the creation of a public medical school in Massachusetts. This school is now known as the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In 1974, he co-sponsored the strict gun-control
Bartley-Fox Law
The Bartley-Fox Law (also known as the Bartley-Fox Amendment) is a Massachusetts law that sets a one-year mandatory minimum sentence for anyone found to be illegally carrying a firearm. It was passed by the Massachusetts General Court in 1974 and t ...
David M. Bartley
David Michael Bartley (February 9, 1935 – June 13, 2023) was an American politician and educator who served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1963 to 1975, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives fro ...