Matthew Fox - Early Life

Early Life

Fox was born in Abington, Pennsylvania. As Fox relates:

"My father was raised in a very blue-blood English family there." Francis Fox went to private school, got a degree in geology from the University of Pennsylvania, and started working as a consultant for an oil company. But his uncle ran a ranch in Wyoming, and the summers Francis had spent there had a lasting effect. "He fell in love with Wyoming, and with that kind of life. That was the man he always wanted to be."

Matthew was a year old when the family moved to Wyoming. They settled in Crowheart (population 163 in the last census), on the Wind River Indian Reservation."

His mother, Loretta B. (née Eagono, originally Iacono), became a teacher, and his father, Francis G. Fox, raised longhorn cattle and horses, and grew barley for Coors beer. Fox's mother was of Italian descent and his father was of English descent; through his father, he is a descendant of Union General George Meade. When Fox was very young, his parents and siblings, Francis, Jr. (b. 1961) and Bayard (b. 1969), were caretakers of the remote "Bitterroot Ranch" outside Dubois for Bayard Fox and Louise "Wendy" Fox. After a few harsh winters, Fox's family purchased the ranch in Crowheart, and he was raised there.

Fox graduated from high school in Wyoming and attended Deerfield Academy for a post-graduate year. Following Deerfield, Fox attended Columbia University, where he majored in Economics and became a brother of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. Fox interviewed for a job to sell stocks at Prudential-Bache.