In 1965, James O Foxx married his wife, Julia, and started his choral directing career in Stuttgart, Arkansas. He became involved in the Arkansas Choral Directors Association during this time by serving on its board of directors. After four years building a choral program in Stuttgart, James and his family moved to El Dorado, Arkansas where he was the choral director and Fine Arts department chairman at El Dorado High School. He served in several positions in the Arkansas Choral Directors Association, including President, as well as Executive Secretary which he held for 11 years. He received the Outstanding Young Educators award in 1976 and the Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award in 1977. James became involved in the National American Choral Directors Association and served on the convention committee of 6 conventions. He served as the Southwestern Division President from 1984-1986. 

 

James and his family moved to Clovis, California in 1986 where he became the choral director at Clovis High school for his remaining 18 years in education. He was the chairman of Performing Arts at the high school and Division President of the Western Division of American Choral Directors from 1995-1997. During James’ career, his choirs won many awards, including national contests. He retired from Clovis High School in 2004. In retirement, he continued adjudicating choral festivals and teaching for choral professors on sabbatical leaves. In 2011, James was given the Excellence in Choral Education Music Award by the Fresno County Office of Education.

 

James passed away in August 2020 at the age of 79. He truly enjoyed his career in choral music and would have been so honored to be a part of the Arkansas Choral Directors Association Hall of Fame.

 

Memories of Jim Foxx - by Tom Street

Jim Foxx served two terms as ArkCDA president from 1974-1978. More significantly, he served as the first executive secretary (director) of the ArkCDA. For the grand salary of $1,200 per year, Jim was responsible for collating and mailing out over 500 membership applications, and the resulting membership directory. He also was responsible for publishing and updating the operating manuals of the ArkCDA. He created the “NOTES” which was the bi-monthly newsletter that was mailed to all member schools. He wrote the first computer program to score all state tryouts; written in Basic, on a Commodore 64 computer on floppy disks. In 1986  Jim left Arkansas for California where he finished his career. He continued his record of service there, serving as president of the California Choral Directors Association and later the Western Division of ACDA.