Maureen Fox:FROM COPYTAKER to woman's editor, Maureen Fox, who has died aged 72, was one of the first women journalists to work in the newsroom of the then Cork Examinernewspaper and became the first Irish print journalist to receive the prestigious Friendship Force International peace award.
She had a unique style of speaking directly to her readers. An independent voice, though never a card-carrying member of the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, she was not afraid to speak her mind and wrote unflinchingly on a broad range of women’s issues.
From the humdrum routine of copytaking (that is, answering phone calls from reporters in the field and typing out their reports), she went on to become an influential columnist, enjoying a large and admiring readership.
For years, her columns were among the most popular in the Examiner, generating letters from readers that poured in by the sackful, usually supporting or contributing financially to some deserving cause she had championed.
Renowned for her altruism, she set up a coal fund to purchase winter fuel for the needy, an initiative that her readers supported generously.
She also attracted people down on their luck as bees to honey. One such, a bearded soul who had known better days, was regularly to be found near the Examinerbuilding in Academy Street in Cork with a pack of hounds tethered on a constantly changing web of binder twine. Much to her distress, however, she had to discourage him after he turned up inside the front office with nearly a dozen dogs in tow, much to the consternation of staff and members of the public.
A supportive friend to Daphne Pochin Mould, an English geologist based in Cork and now in her 90s, Fox wrote about her work both as a pilot and photographer who took aerial photographs for her many books on monastic and other traditions in Ireland.
Stylish and blessed with a cheerful disposition, Fox had a warm, attractive personality, a fund of amusing stories, a ready laugh and was the best of company.
After her education at Rochelle School in Cork, she joined the family business of Booth and Fox, manufacturers of down-quilt bedding, before working in England and later joining the Cork Examiner(now Irish Examiner) in the late 1960s as a copytaker, going on to become one of its best-known and best-loved journalists.
Not alone did she cover women’s issues in her “Fox on Friday” column, she also ghosted the hugely popular “Paws Awhile” column published under the byline of Ponsonby, her corpulent Basset hound that regularly waddled behind her to work, snoozing beneath her desk during the day. His successor, Erskine, also a Basset hound, took over and continued the column for many years.
In 1986, she became the first Irish print journalist to be honoured by the Friendship Force International Awards, marking her “outstanding contribution to world peace and friendship”. The panel of judges included Rosalynn Carter, wife of former US president Jimmy Carter.
She retired from the Examinerin 1991. Not surprisingly, given her popularity as a journalist and in Cork theatre and social circles, she was approached by the Progressive Democrats in 1997 to stand as a general election candidate in Cork South Central, an invitation she declined.
Following her divorce, she married Jan van Putten, a Dutch organist who led a series of local choral groups, including the choir at Lismore, Co Waterford. They lived near Tallow, setting up a market garden enterprise and produced a wide variety of vegetables. They later moved to France and lived in the village of La Roche-Bernard in Brittany up to her death.
She is survived by Jan, her daughter Tanya, sister Sandra, brother Brian and son-in-law Trevor.
Maureen Fox: born February 5th, 1938; died December 17th, 2010