Obituary : William Fox; Pioneering Engineer for County

William J. Fox, a retired Marine Corps brigadier general and war hero who was Los Angeles County’s first engineer and a pioneering urban planner, has died. He was 95.

Fox died peacefully at his home in Fillmore on Easter with his family gathered around him, Bruce Faulk, husband of Fox’s granddaughter, said Wednesday.

Named county engineer in 1951, “the general,” as he was affectionately known in his later years, served as chief engineer of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission from 1926 to 1948, became the county’s first head of building and safety after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, and was the county’s first director of aviation. Fox Field in Lancaster, one of several county airports the flier oversaw in the 1950s, was named in his honor.

Fox was credited with planning area roads and sewer systems in the 1940s that remain part of the county infrastructure today and are designed to last into the next century. The Regional Planning Commission plans to adjourn its meeting Tuesday in his honor.

“If we do not guide industrial development, we can ruin the entire area. We must achieve balance, above all, and avoid becoming dependent on too few sources of revenue,” Fox warned presciently in 1947. “One-sided development is comparable to that of many a coal-mining town in the East where, when the mines shut down, the town collapses.”

After serving in World War I, Fox attended USC, where he earned a degree in engineering. Years later, determined to learn more about untangling the legal red tape he encountered in government planning, he attended Loyola University School of Law.

He began his career as city engineer for South Pasadena in 1925, and a year later became chief engineer of the county’s Planning Commission. After heading the Building and Safety and Aviation departments, in 1951 he was given the title of county engineer and placed in charge of five county departments, with orders to streamline the building process.

Fox, who retired from county service in 1955, had a remarkable parallel military career. As an engineer, he designed five military bases in Southern California, including Los Alamitos and El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, which he at one time commanded.

The Marine Reserve officer was recalled to military service immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 and took a five-year recess from county government to fly bombers, build bases and command units.

He supervised the construction of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal and served as its commanding officer. He received a Purple Heart for a spine injury suffered when he was knocked over a 40-foot bluff during Japanese bombing of the island Jan. 31, 1943.

Fox also earned the Legion of Merit with a Combat V, a Distinguished Flying Cross and three air medals. Off duty, he served as Erroll Flynn’s double as a stunt pilot in the 1941 film “Dive Bomber,” and was a charter inductee into the Hollywood Stuntmen’s Hall of Fame.

After his retirement from the Marines and from Los Angeles County, the irrepressible Fox spent more than 20 years in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, becoming the only American to qualify as a charro, or Mexican rodeo rider. He rode for several years with the San Miguel Charro Team.

Comparing the septuagenarian’s fitness and “ardor for life” to that of Gen. George S. Patton Jr., Times columnist Ed Ainsworth wrote during those years: “It seems utterly incredible that an Americano del Norte could become a charro, because this is undoubtedly the most exclusive organization of strictly Mexican horsemen imaginable, built upon a tradition going back not only to Spain but to Arabia itself, home of the horse so favored by the Mexicans.”

Fox returned to California in 1981 to reside near his son, Stuart, in Fillmore.

In addition to his son, Fox is survived by a brother, Robert of New Jersey, a granddaughter, Sheryl Fox-Scarborough of North Hills, and a great-grandson.

A funeral with military honors and burial will be in Fox’s native Trenton, N.J., on Friday. A memorial service in Southern California is planned for May 1.