Fox Conner

United States Army general

Fox Conner (November 2, 1874 – October 13, 1951) was a major general of the United States Army. He served as operations officer for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) during World War I, and is best remembered as a mentor to the generation of officers who led the army in World War II, particularly as "the man who made Eisenhower".

Conner was born on November 12, 1874, at Slate Springs, in Calhoun County, Mississippi. His father, Robert Herbert Conner, was a soldier in the Confederate States Army who was wounded several times during the American Civil War. In his final engagement, the Battle of Atlanta, Robert Conner was shot in the head and lost his sight. After the war he was nicknamed "Blind Bob". He learned to gauge the grades of cotton by touch, and became a successful cotton trader. In addition, he began teaching at the Slate Springs Academy. The school had been founded by Conner's uncle Fuller Fox in 1872, and several members of the Fox family were on the faculty. Robert Conner met Nancy (Nannie) Hughes Fox when both were teaching at the academy, and they married on 30 December 1873. Conner was educated in Slate Springs, and was an avid reader of The Youth's Companion magazine. After turning eighteen, and "captivated by military history at a young age", he wanted to embark on a career in the armed forces, so his uncle recommended him to Representative Hernando Money for appointment to the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, New York. Money nominated Conner on 31 May 1893. He entered the following year.

Conner left Panama in late 1924 to assume his duties in Washington as the Army's Assistant Chief of Staff for Logistics (G 4), which started on December 1, 1924. Conner died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on October 13, 1951. His ashes were scattered at Brandreth Park in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. In addition, there is a cenotaph to his memory at Dale Cemetery in Ossining, New York.

In 1902, Conner married Virginia Brandreth, the daughter of Franklin Brandreth, a successful patent medicine maker from New York, and granddaughter of Benjamin Brandreth. They had three children: daughter Betty Virginia Vida (1903–2000), the wife of Colonel Frank Joseph Vida (1894–1970); son Fox Brandreth (1905–2000), a 1927 graduate of West Point who served as an army lieutenant before pursuing a business career as president of the Brandreth family business, the Allcock Manufacturing Company, a maker of humane animal traps; and daughter Florence Slocum Gans (1910–1964), the wife of Colonel Edgar A. Gans (1902–1965).