Page 74 - Lubbock Senior Link Magazine Summer 2022 - Online Magazine

Exceptional
SENIORS
About Us
Alice & Ron Cox
by Ron Cox
grew up on the
north side of
I Chicago. My dad
worked as a display
man at Montgomery
Wards. He created
beautiful window
displays for the
department store. We
lived on the 5th floor
of the Field Garden
Apartments. No
elevator. We did have
a roof garden with
a sand box for kids
and a great view of
Chicago’s skyscrapers.
We loved to watch Costumed for Halloween
the sweeping beam
of the light on the top
of the Palmolive building at night. I
remember walking through concrete
canyons where the sun only shone
on the sidewalks below at noon.
That was my world.
That all changed in 1942 when I
was six. We moved to the town of
Chicago Heights, an hour south of
Chicago. Building in this town of
30,000 stopped at the start of WWII.
We lived at the edge of town. Just a
block away, tall grass prairies were
filled with wildflowers of all colors.
There were multicolored butterflies
and brown jumping grasshoppers.
Quarter-sized black and gold garden
spiders were waiting to catch them
74 Lubbock Senior Link
in their webs. engineering at the Colorado School
At night, the of Mines. Alice was studying
fireflies came nursing at the University of Denver.
out at dark. It was love at first sight, and we
We saw 1,000 married in Phoenix 20 months
tiny, blinking later. I went on to earn my MS
lemon- and PhD in physical metallurgy at
colored the University of Denver, and she
lanterns. earned a BS and RN in nursing at
In the the University of Colorado.
mornings,
you could After graduation in 1964, Alice’s
walk folks took us for an eight-week
barefooted in tour of Europe in a green VW bus.
the grass that We slept in the bus, and her folks
was damp slept in an affordable hotel. Driving
with cool through East Germany to Berlin and
sparkling seeing the recently erected Berlin
dew. Wall were memorable experiences.
We later traveled to many other
Alice grew up in Patterson, New places in the world, but that’s
Jersey. Her folks were math another story.
teachers. Alice suffered from asthma Returning home, we moved to
as a child, so, her parents decided Dallas, Texas where I joined Texas
to move to Phoenix, Arizona,
where a dry climate would be more Instruments. It was a pretty exciting
healthful. Now imagine moving business. The semiconductor
from a lush, green, tree-covered business was brand new. I saw the
place to a desert valley, surrounded creation of circuits for handheld
by bare rocky peaks. Yet, the desert calculators to chips for laptops,
has its own beauty. It is spectacular digital cameras, and cell phones.
in early spring, when all the desert A highlight was starting up the
plants are in bloom. When the trees first, Japanese-integrated circuits
in the orange groves bloom, you will factory in 1973. Alice and I spent
remember the fragrance forever. two summers in Japan with our
daughters and made many Japanese
Alice and I met in Denver in 1958. friends.
I was studying metallurgical