Pilgrimage to Israel was a dream fulfilled

Friday, Dec. 1, 2006 | 7:19 a.m.

When Mary Fox took over as president of Congregation Ner Tamid's Sisterhood in the mid-1980s, she envisioned new frontiers for the women's religious service group.

"Mom knew it could be more than just ladies baking pies," daughter Dana Pretner-Andrew said. "She believed the sisterhood could become a motivational force. She instituted programs like teen panel discussion groups and raised funds to send underprivileged kids to camp."

In 1989 the synagogue rewarded Fox for her activism, naming her congregationalist of the year.

Mary Linda Fox, the daughter-in-law of pioneering Las Vegas restaurateur Abe Fox and a former publicist who served as an assistant to flamboyant Hollywood star-maker Jay Bernstein, died Tuesday at Nathan Adelson Hospice. She was 66.

Her family said she died of pancreatic cancer. Fox was diagnosed with the disease four months ago.

Services for the Southern Nevada resident of 28 years - the last 15 in Henderson - will be 1 p.m. today at King David Memorial Chapel, 2697 Eldorado Lane.

Fox's mother, Frances Wright, was a Las Vegas dress shop operator who would change the size tags on dresses so that full-figured celebrity customers such as Totie Fields and Lanie Kazan would think they had lost weight.

Fox rubbed elbows with celebrities in her own right, including Sally Field and Farrah Fawcett, when she worked in the 1970s for the late Bernstein.

Born Mary Wright on Dec. 11, 1939, in Los Angeles, she graduated from Los Angeles High and attended Santa Monica City College for two years before moving to New York for a public relations job at RCA records.

She moved to Las Vegas in 1978 and reunited with her high school sweetheart, Jerry Fox, who became her second husband. He survives her.

Fox often spoke with great pride of her late father-in-law, Abe Fox, who during the segregated 1950s operated Foxy's Deli, one of the few Strip restaurants that served black customers.

In July Fox fulfilled a lifelong dream of making a pilgrimage to Israel, where "she got in touch with her spirituality," Pretner-Andrew said.

Shortly after her return home, Fox was diagnosed with cancer.

In addition to her husband and daughter, Fox is survived by a son, Ryan Pretner, and his wife, Mindy, both of Las Vegas; a son-in-law, Todd Andrew of Las Vegas; a stepson, Stuart Fox of Las Vegas; a stepdaughter, Francine Jackson of Peoria, Ariz.; a brother, Ronald Wright of Los Angeles; two grandchildren and seven stepgrandchildren.

The family said donations in Mary Fox's memory can be made to Congregation Ner Tamid's Building Fund or the sisterhood, or to the American Cancer Society.