Mary Reifschneider Cox, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, friend, and letters editor at the Los Angeles Times for 20 years, passed away on June 10 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. Born Mary Reifschneider in Lincoln, Nebraska, on July 27, 1943, she earned her B.A. in journalism at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, then moved to Chicago to work on community newspapers. She married Karl Cox, the love of her life, in 1971, and they welcomed daughter Becky in 1973. The family moved to Southern California in 1976, as Karl continued to work in sales and manufacturing in the rapidly growing semiconductor industry, and settled in South Pasadena in 1983.
Mary was a copyeditor and book editor at the Pasadena Star-News, then joined the L.A. Times in 1984 to work on Videotext, a short-lived electronic news delivery initiative. After 1986, Mary stayed on to edit Letters to The Times. She bridged eras: Envelopes sliced open on a Pitney Bowes machine. Faxes pouring into the tray. Emails, coming first in a trickle, then in scores and finally thousands. Subtracting the spam, form-letter campaigns, hate mail and unsigned screeds, Mary considered every letter. She looked for what readers saw as important, for interesting angles and seldom-heard voices.
After Mary retired in 2006, she joined the Woman's Club of South Pasadena, serving as president from 2016 to 2018. At the club she organized clothing donations for veterans, served on its South Pasadena High School scholarship committee, and with her cherished grandchildren, packed hygiene kits. She penned the club's Communique. Karl preceded Mary in death in 2019. She is mourned and remembered by her daughter Becky Rios and her grandchildren, Lucy and Max; by her family, by friends in her South Pasadena community, and by her former colleagues. Donations in memory of Mary Cox may be made to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.