John Patrick Cox

John Patrick Cox, age 97, passed away peacefully on July 7, 2025. Beloved husband of Margaret “Rita” (nee: McGuane). Devoted and proud father of United States Federal District Court Chief Judge Sean F. (Janine) Cox, Wayne Circuit Court Judge Kevin J. (Elizabeth) Cox, and Michael A. (Laura) Cox. Loving grandfather of Lindsey Sanford (Todd), John (Nirupama), Judge Kiefer (Rhonda) Cox, Caitlin Laystrom (Arthur), Katherine, Brendan, Jack, Clare (Zachary), Sinead, Patrick, Conor, Brian, and Rory. Loving great grandfather of Grace Boyle, Savanna Sanford, Arthur “Cal” Laystrom IV, and Jack Laystrom.

Visitation is on Saturday, July 12, 2025, at 9 AM until the Funeral Mass at 10 AM at St. Kenneth Catholic Church ,14951 N Haggerty Road, Plymouth, Michigan.

Please no flowers. If so inclined, please donate online to Detroit Christo Rey High School, detroitcristorey.org, or Most Holy Trinity Grade School, mhtacademy.org, or Detroit Catholic Central High School, catholiccentral.net.

John Cox lived a long and extraordinary life. A short story tells it all: On his 93rd birthday, John was in isolation in his assisted living room due to the Covid mandate. His wife Rita was in a different room on the same floor but had not seen him in weeks as she was locked down too. When one of his sons called to say “Happy Birthday” and wondered whether John was down about being isolated on his birthday, John responded, “Michael, don’t worry about me. The Nazis tried bombing my neighborhood in 1940 and ten years later the Chinese Communists shot at me in Korea, so this isn’t so bad. Plus, one of the girls who dropped off my food plate said she would get me a beer!". John was born on March 31, 1928 – the same day as Gordie Howe, but thousands of miles away in Parkhead on the East End of Glasgow, Scotland. Parkhead was a primarily Irish Catholic community of laborers recruited to work in the forge works of Parkhead that fed Glasgow’s shipbuilding industry. Catholics like John’s parents lived day-to-day as itinerant construction laborers or working in the fish markets or hustlers or joined the British Army. In the 1930s, Glasgow was the poorest city in Western Europe, but John and his family had faith in each other and their Catholicism. John left school when he was 13 at the beginning of World War II. He joined the carpenter’s guild (union) and became a journeyman carpenter. As a 17-year-old at the end of World War II, John began several years of traveling from one English city to another working on rebuilding bombed-out buildings, while trying to figure out how to get to America. Toward the end of 1948, he was able to immigrate to Toronto – one step closer to Detroit “where the streets were
paved with gold, the land of milk and honey”, he used to say. He applied to come to the U.S. As part of that process, he took a bus to Sarnia, walked across the Blue Water Bridge, and then hitchhiked to Detroit to meet his sponsor. By the beginning of 1950, he was admitted and established a new life in America. But there was a hitch: a few months later, the Korean War began, and he was drafted.

Faced with the choice between going to war, to stay in America or going home, he chose war to obtain a new life in America. He spent a year in Korea, running a machine gun squad as an Army staff sergeant, endured heavy combat that he did not talk about until he was in his 70s, and ended up being sworn in as a citizen by the end of the war. He literally fought his way into America.

After Korea, he came home to Detroit “where, I thought the streets were paved with gold” and met Margaret “Rita” Cox, the love his life, at an Irish social club. He spent 13 years as a union carpenter with the Detroit Public Schools. There he met a vice principal at Detroit Central High School who encouraged him to go
back to school. He was afraid to go back to school, but in his late 30s and after two decades away from school, he went back to night school for several years and earned an associate’s degree in civil engineering from Lawrence Institute of Technology. In his early 40s he got a job with Ford Motor Co as a civil engineer and became a “white collar”
worker- - although he still came home with dirt on his clothes from construction sites.

As elementary school kids, John’s children saw their dad go from wearing overalls to wearing a collared shirt and a tie. None of his three sons fully appreciated at that time what their Dad did, moving from Parkhead to carpentry to Korea to mid-life college, but they knew it was life changing for him and his family.
As one might imagine, to do what John did was not easy and it had its costs. He spent his whole career at Ford working more hours than anyone, shaking off the feeling that his age and background made him not as good as his younger co-workers, and taking assignments across the country to try to get ahead for his
family. He never complained, he simply worked. His work was motivated by his love of his family. He simply did not know anything different. He made sure that if nothing else his kids learned how to work. And learned loyalty to the family. And to stand up for your family and do what you think is right. At the end of his life, John could not walk, and sometimes struggled to say what he wanted to say, but each day he showed his love for his wife and kids and grandkids by his simple will to live - to live each day as best as one can. John often told his children as he grew older and more philosophical, to “just remember that every obstacle in life has a handle. If you just keep working on the obstacle, you will find the handle you need to move it out of your way”.
 

He was, simply, an extraordinary man.

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