Jeff ’72 and Debby ’73 Fox: Helping Build What Comes Next

It started, of all places, in the Viking Room.

The fall of 1969 saw the LU football team, where Jeff Fox ’72 was a second year guard, spend more time on the road than on campus. Several of the football players decided one night to meet some of the new first year students. Jeff had spotted Debby ’73 in the “Zoo Book,” which back then was Freshman directory. They had gone to sister high schools in Illinois, so he tried to find her that evening on the library steps. She walked past with her roommate and thought it was silly. That, she figured, was that.

Then, before Thanksgiving, a polka band played at the Viking Room. Jeff was there and came up to ask her to dance.

“You’re from New Trier and you owe me a dance,” he said.

She figured she owed him one. “And the rest is history,” Debby says.

More than 50 years later, Lawrence is still part of their lives. Jeff is a member of the Board of Trustees and co-chairs the Level Up committee. Debby champions the project alongside him while also serving as chair of the President’s Advisory Council.

A Good Education, and a Chance to Play

Jeff came to Lawrence for two things: a good education, which was his mother’s top priority, and the chance to play football.

He found both, though Jeff readily admits he didn’t take the classroom as seriously as he should have. He arrived, as he puts it, a “horrible writer.” He credits Lawrence’s professors with teaching him to write, communicate, and think on his feet, and sports with teaching him the value of teamwork.

“The ability to be a lifelong learner. The ability to communicate. The ability to problem solve. The ability to reinvent yourself,” he says, “was very helpful in my career.”

Debby’s path to Lawrence was almost accidental. She was set on attending a different school entirely, but her high school counselor required applications to three colleges.

“Fine, give me two more, because I am not changing my mind,” she told her.

“Have you ever heard of Lawrence in Appleton, Wisconsin?” the counselor asked.

Debby had not. But a campus visit that October made her reconsider.

“It was a glorious fall day in Appleton,” she says. “The campus was pretty, the leaves were turning, you add a Conservatory … And I thought, ‘Hmm, this looks like a college that I could go to.'”

She applied, was accepted and auditioned for the Conservatory. She studied voice for a year before realizing she loved “the college side of the street” even more. Going to Lawrence was never her intention, she says, “but I have not regretted it for a moment.”

She left Lawrence with a teaching certificate and taught for years. Then, at 40, she decided to go to seminary, what she calls “a midlife crisis, if you will. ” She became an ordained minister and worked in theological and Christian education. She says Lawrence taught her that you never stop learning and never stop thinking about what could come next.

“Short of doing brain surgery,” she says, “Lawrence taught me there wasn’t much that I couldn’t figure out how to do. And I think that has proven true.”

Lawrence Friends for Life

For both Jeff and Debby, the people are what stand out most about Lawrence.

“Our dearest friends in life are our Lawrence friends,” Debby says. “They have been with us for more than 50 years. We still communicate regularly. We still visit … it’s just part of who we are as people to have this Lawrence connection.”

These days, they’re still celebrating milestones together, including attending each other’s 50^th anniversaries and celebrating the “big” birthdays.

Debby also points to her relationships with professors: small classes, conversations at the Union, housesitting for a professor on vacation, and dinners at another’s home. “It really felt like a very holistic way of learning,” she says. “Academically rigorous, socially engaging, and relationally very fulfilling.”

For today’s students, their advice is simple: take a chance and make the most of the opportunities in front of you.

“Take advantage of every opportunity you have,” Jeff says. “Learn as much as you can. Do as much as you can. Enjoy it as much as you can, because it only gets tougher when you get out.”

“I think that part of your job as a student is to take a chance, is to give it a try, is to go see what is happening, not to assume that it’s not for you,” Debby says.

More Time, More Space, More Opportunity

Level Up has been part of Jeff and Debby’s conversations “long before there was a Level Up,” Debby says.

“It’s the one physical attribute that Lawrence needs to be able to compete in today’s world that we did not have, and we have never addressed it,” Jeff says. “It’s almost like table stakes. You have to have it if you want to compete.”

The possibilities are what excite Debby most.

“It’s the encouragement students need to take that next step in their own performance, whether that’s athletically, on the stage, in a practice room, or in a classroom,” she says. “It’s more time, more space, more opportunity to gather, learn, collaborate, and expand what it means to be a musician, what it means to be an athlete, what it means to be a student-athlete and a student-musician, in a space that’s been designed with all sorts of levels of activity and expertise in mind.”

Track and field offers a clear example. Winter has meant training outdoors on a snow-covered track and long jumpers competing without ever practicing what it’s like to land in a sand pit.

The Loop, next to Alexander Gymnasium, will change that. It will include a six-lane indoor track, long jump and pole vault areas, and a turf infield for soccer, football, and lacrosse, along with practice space for baseball and softball.

“Appleton is cold,” she says. “And adding a facility … you can practice indoors. You just strengthen our own athletic teams and their opportunities to excel as student-athletes.”

The Hub, in downtown Appleton, will bring together batting cages, a hockey shooting room, a strength and cardio center, and a simulator suite with three bays that can be used for a range of virtual activities. Down the hall from the Conservatory’s new rehearsal suite, there will also be a fencing training room.

“Our completely amazing fencing team is going to have a state of the art home, while an oboe player is practicing what it’s like to play with the Chicago Symphony. I think that’s just astonishing,” Debby says.

She also sees the new facilities as a way to introduce Lawrence to people who might not otherwise encounter it.

“Just think if we host birthday parties in the simulator bays for 10-year-old boys who can come and go, ‘Ooh gee, I could go to college here,'” Debby says.

“We got the kind of education we got because people ahead of us, alumni ahead of us, paid it forward,” she says. “I don’t expect today’s students’ education to look like mine. I expect them to need things I never thought of. But I expect Lawrence to be able to move forward.”

“It’s important that Lawrence has a long, successful life, and I certainly want to be helpful in getting a part of that done,” Jeff says. “That’s why I got involved.”

“I think all of that just says that the life of a Lawrentian is never over,” Debby says, “and that it continues throughout the rest of our lives.”

Posted September 17, 2026 in Donor Profile.