The Passing of Giants: ICE founders And RA Organizers Ellen Fox and Lisa North

I heard from Ellen Fox's daughter this morning that Ellen passed away on Friday, just two weeks after learning about the passing of Lisa North from Alzeimers. Lisa and Ellen were both core members of the Retiree Advocate organizing committee and joined along with me and Gloria Brandman around 2016. Lisa, who was the RA chapter leader candidate in the 2018 chapter election, hadn't been able to participate over the past few years, but she was a key player, especially as an expert educator with Bank St training, a stalwart in the anti-testing movement and. popular with everyone.

Ellen was an active RA member until about 6 weeks ago when we began to lose touch and she said it was due to phone and computer problems. Notorious for going to be in the middle of the night, she used me as her alarm clock to wake her up for our 10AM meetings. Over the past week my phone calls would not go through so Sheila from RA who lives nearby went to the apartment on Tuesday to check and a neighbor said she was in the hospital.

Both Ellen and Lisa had been in New Action from its earliest days in the mid-90s along with the late James Eterno and his wife Camille but left when the leadership made a deal with Randi to support Unity in the 2004 elections and became part of the founding ICE meeting in late October 2003. Think of it: James, Lisa and Ellen lost over the past year.

Ellen has left a giant oppo footprint in the UFT. A member of Teachers Action Caucus from its early days and through their merger with New Directions in 1995 to form New Action, Ellen was elected to the UFT Exec Bd as a HS rep on the NA slate in 1995, 97, 99. She was chapter leader at the massive George Washington HS campus in Washington Hts until transferring to Gregorio Luperon where she was also CL until she retired. 

 

As a founder of ICE her knowledge and experience helped guide the new caucus through the move of ICE into MORE in 2011. Ellen and I handled the petition campaigns for MORE in 2013 and 2016 and she was relentless in hunting down every piece of information we'd need for each candidate. And when we filled in the petition headings her handwriting was impeccable.

 

She left MORE along with the rest of us and joined the RA Organizers when we began Zoom meetings during the pandemic.

Her analysis of UFT politics was deep and insightful. She earned the love and respect even from the people running the union, with LeRoy Barr being a big admirer.

Her daughter said there would be no burial but a memorial sometime in January.

As for Lisa, I hear there may be a memorial in December but have no information yet.