Phyllis Ames Cox; potent presence behind Watergate prosecutor

The bond between Phyllis Ames Cox and her husband, former Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, was on public display Oct. 20, 1973, the most difficult moment of his career, in the way they tightly held hands entering a news conference. Hours later, he was fired by President Nixon for refusing to pull back on his investigation into Oval Office misdeeds.

In a letter to his wife for their 24th anniversary several years earlier, Cox had tried to explain what she meant to him: "How can I tell you how much I love you? That my universe, despite the time we are apart and the depth of my professional interests, revolves about you? That knowing that you are there and we will be together is my absolute dependence? I don't know how to say it very well. You are me, for without you there would be no me."

Mrs. Cox, who grew up in Wayland and had a mind and a presence that friends say made her a perfect match for her memorably serious husband, died Tuesday in her home in South Brooksville, Maine, after a period of declining health. She was 93.

"She had such wit, but she was so centered," said Ann Doyle of Bethesda, Md., a longtime friend. "She was a strong woman, a compassionate woman, and just stood by her man with such fealty, but she was so much fun. She brought the levity into the Cox house."

As graceful on a basketball court as she was at a White House social gathering, Mrs. Cox cut a lithe figure as her husband rose through the ranks of Boston's legal community and was named US solicitor general after John F. Kennedy was elected president.

In the mid-1940s, she helped found the first 4-H Club for horses in the United States. As her three children were growing up in the farmhouse where she had been raised , she often could be found loading a two-horse trailer and hopping into the family's half-ton pickup truck to ferry animals to and from events or households.

In Wayland, where she lived for a half century before retiring to the Maine farm where the family had spent summers, she played on the Tired Mothers, a pickup basketball team. At 5 foot 9, Mrs. Cox was a forward. She had played basketball, field hockey, and tennis at Smith College, from which she graduated in 1935.

"She was very athletic," said her daughter Sarah of South Brooksville . "She adored sports, especially the Red Sox and the Patriots."

In 1996, Mrs. Cox was honored at a dinner for 50 years of service to 4-H, and was delighted that giving a speech was not required.

"I don't think I have to sing for my supper, which is good," she said, according to "Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation," a biography written by Ken Gormley.

"Mother always got an enormous amount of credit for being an important part of Father's life, but she was also very much her own person," her daughter said. "If she had not been associated with Dad, she would be remembered for who she herself was."

While Archibald Cox, who died in 2004, was from a family of prominent lawyers, Mrs. Cox's grandfather had been dean of Harvard Law School and her father had served as the school's administrative secretary.

"She had all the law school genes," said Jim Doyle, former spokesman for Archibald Cox, who added that, in a different age, Mrs. Cox would have become a lawyer.

"And she was brilliant," said Doyle's wife, Ann.

Phyllis Ames graduated from Buckingham School and was at a Harvard football game in 1935 when she met Archibald Cox, who was "wearing a tweed coat and flannel trousers," she recalled in Gormley's biography. "To be honest, he looked a little shabby. Clothes didn't mean that much to him."

He was smitten and proposed a few months later when they were in a car stopped at a traffic light on Main Street in Waltham, according to the biography. She demurred, then said yes when he asked again weeks later while they were visiting friends in Cambridge. As they sat in the living room envisioning their future, Cole Porter's "Night and Day" played on the radio.

Gormley's biography says that when Felix Frankfurter, who would become a US Supreme Court justice, heard about the engagement, he sent a note of congratulations: "My God, what a powerful legal combination!"

Although she taught young children for brief periods at schools in Concord and in Virginia, Mrs. Cox devoted her life to her husband and children and a menagerie that at one point numbered three horses, a dog, a cat, and a dozen hens.

"She always remained very much grounded in her home and her family -- and the animals that were a part of it," her daughter said.

In addition to her daughter Sarah, Mrs. Cox leaves another daughter, Phyllis of Denver; a son, Archibald Jr. of New York City; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held in the Boston area in the spring.