One-Time Multimillionaire Penniless at His Death : Ex-Publisher John Fox Dies at 78

John Fox, once a multimillionaire who owned a controlling interest in Western Union and whose widely publicized testimony before Congress struck at the integrity of the Eisenhower Administration, has died penniless and in obscurity, it was learned this week.

Fox, who had purchased the Boston Post for $6 million in 1952 because he wanted a voice for his fiercely anti-Communist views, was 78 when he died Sept. 6 at the Boston Veterans Administration Hospital.

He had spent his final years in a modest boarding house in Boston’s Beacon Hill section.

“He was flat broke at the end,” his doctor, Julius Siegal, told the Boston Globe, which reported Fox’s death. “But he would not accept help. He looked pretty sad near the end and was down to 110 pounds.”

A Harvard Law School graduate and former jazz pianist, Fox was an enigma in New England financial circles when he bought the Post saying: “I want to fight communism.” The former securities broker soon became a major force in the Boston publishing, social and political world and claimed to be a longtime friend of controversial financier Bernard Goldfine and an acquaintance of Sherman Adams, the former New Hampshire governor and chief aide to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Adams’ acceptance of a vicuna coat and other favors from Goldfine eventually forced him from a seriously embarrassed Eisenhower White House.

When Fox bought the Post he said he was convinced that he could return the paper to its glory days, when it boasted the highest circulation of any morning daily in the country.

But his experience was in stock and bonds, not newspapers, and his tenure as publisher found him making predictions of mass nuclear bombings of American cities by Soviet planes and of a Russian government plotting daily to take over the United States through a network of spies.

The newspaper’s circulation dwindled rapidly from 320,000 when he took it over to 260,000 when it went out of business in 1956.

A year before the paper closed, an attorney for the Boston Herald-Traveler said at a Federal Communications Commission hearing: “The Post Publishing Co., under Mr. Fox, has no credit. Its word is useless and its commitments cannot be relied on.”

Many felt Fox’s antipathy toward the Herald-Traveler and its publisher, Robert B. Choate, led him to testify before the House subcommittee on legislative oversight. In a series of hearings in June and July of 1958 Fox charged that “federal forces” had conspired to eliminate the Post and that Goldfine and the Herald-Traveler Corp. “were not unconnected” to those forces.

He then went on to try to link Goldfine, a textile manufacturer, to Adams, testifying vaguely that the presidential aide had been helped financially by Goldfine and that Goldfine had done Adams other favors. Fox’s testimony, criticized roundly because it was made in public, was never fully substantiated, although other witnesses eventually forced Adams’ resignation.

Although Fox had sold the Post, the paper’s financial problems continued to plague him. He lost his lavish homes in Connecticut and Maine and by the 1960s had reverted to entertaining to support himself.

The man who once had 165,000 controlling shares of Western Union Telegraph Co., valued at $7 million, could be seen playing the piano in restaurants and waterfront bars. The Globe also said he once stayed briefly at the Pine Street Inn, a refuge for the homeless in Boston.

Several years ago, a reporter found Fox living at the rear of a bookstore. He asked that a story not be written about him, “Not now, anyway. Later.”

Fox’s old friends tried to help him, they told The Globe.

“But Johnny wouldn’t have any part of it,” said Ray Faxon, a former business associate who now lives on Cape Cod. “He always thought he could do anything. He didn’t need anyone. And I’ll say this about Johnny, he certainly was resilient.”

Maurice Saval, another friend, said he saw Fox a year ago and offered him money. The former millionaire refused to take it.

“He once was one of the most colorful personalities in Boston,” Saval said. “But when he came into my office, I was just heartsick. He looked so bad.”