Flash player is required to view weather conditions. Download

Barbara Cox Anthony, co-owner of Cox Enterprises and daughter of Dayton Daily News founder and three-time Ohio governor James M. Cox, died Monday after a long illness. She was 84.

Mrs. Anthony was chairman of Dayton Newspapers and a member of the Cox Enterprises board of directors. Along with her sister Anne Cox Chambers of Atlanta, Mrs. Anthony owned about half of Cox Enterprises and was listed by Forbes magazine as the 17th richest American last year, with assets of $12.6 billion.

The company's current holdings include 17 daily newspapers including the Dayton Daily News; Cox Communications, one of the nation's largest cable and telephony companies; Manheim, the world's largest wholesale auto auction company; Cox Auto Trader, an Internet and print automotive advertising company; 15 TV stations and the majority ownership of 80 radio stations, including WHIO-TV and radio.

Although Mrs. Anthony moved to Honolulu as a young woman, she was still generous to many causes here, giving annual four-year scholarships in her name to outstanding male and female graduating seniors from Miami Valley high schools and donating $1.6 million over the years to Children's Medical Center. In 2002, the hospital named the new Cox Center for Children's Health in her honor.

"My mother was actively involved in our company through her leadership on the Cox Enterprises board of directors. She inspired me both personally and professionally," said Jim Kennedy, Cox Enterprises Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Mrs. Anthony's son. "As we mourn my mother's passing, we will always be grateful to her for her leadership and constant support of Cox employees, their families and our businesses."

Kennedy and Mrs. Anthony's daughter, Blair Parry-Okeden, were at their mother's side when she died in her sleep at her Honolulu home.

Mrs. Anthony served as a member of the board of directors of the Hawaii Preparatory Academy and was the only female member of the board of directors of the Santa Gertrudis Breeders International Association. Mrs. Anthony was a director and founder of the Hawaii School for Girls, a director of the Children's Hospital of Honolulu and a director of the James M. Cox Foundation.

As chairman of Hualalai Land Corporation, Mrs. Anthony oversaw all aspects of a 7,500-acre ranch located on the slopes of Mt. Hualalai, Hawaii. Ranch operations include cattle breeding, sale of cut flowers and coffee production. Mrs. Anthony also was chairman of Winderadeen Corporation, Canberra, Australia, a commercial operation of 2,500 breeding cows.

Mrs. Anthony grew up at Trailsend, the home Gov. Cox built on a hill in Kettering during World War I. Her father was a former schoolteacher who bought the Dayton Daily News in 1898, a small paper at the time.

In 1920, he ran for president on the Democratic ticket with Franklin D. Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the Navy before his nomination. Cox lost the election to Warren G. Harding and never ran for office again.

Mrs. Anthony's childhood was privileged and unusual for a native Daytonian. Her father introduced her to powerful and important people of the time.

As a teenager at Trailsend in 1940, she listened as her father discussed politics with Roosevelt, who then was president.

"The evening of the day he came," she recalled later, "I sat with Daddy and the president and listened. It was wonderful. Daddy always asked everybody questions, you know, and President Roosevelt was the first person I ever heard who could answer all of them."

She also spent time at an old family farm in Jacksonburg in Butler County, where weekends were filled with chores.

"She was just really smart, and a ton of fun — full of energy. She loved tennis and golf," said Jeane Woodhull of Oakwood, a lifelong friend. "Her kids and my kids would always play together" whenever Mrs. Anthony returned from Hawaii in the 1940s and 1950s to visit with her parents.

She took a keen interest in the Cox Arboretum during that time, Woodhull said.

"We were great friends," Woodhull said, "until distance did us in."

She became chairman of Dayton Newspapers Inc. in 1974 following the death of her brother, James M. Cox Jr. In 1977, she was elected the first woman to serve on the board of directors of Tenneco, Inc.

Drawn to Hawaii by its unspoiled beauty, Mrs. Anthony started a 7,500-acre cattle ranch on the slopes of Mount Hualalai in 1960, which is now home to top-quality purebred Santa Gertrudis and crossbred cattle produced for market and for breeding.

In 1975, she diversified to include production of exotic African protea flowers, which are cut and sold in Hawaii and throughout the United States and Japan. In 1999, the ranch began growing high-elevation, no-pesticide coffee and is one of the highest-producing coffee farms in the Kona coffee belt area.

Mrs. Anthony also was a frequent visitor to Australia, where Winderadeen Corp., which she chaired, operated two large commercial ranches covering 30,000 acres with 2,500 breeding cows, as well as sheep and purebred quarter horses. The Winderadeen Quarter Horse Stud is one of Australia's best-known, producing multiple champions at the Royal Sydney Show.

Australia was attractive as well because of family. Mrs. Anthony's daughter, Blair, lives there with her two sons. The ranching operation along the Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales, begun in 1971, was an extension of Anthony's long interest in cattle, horses and the environment.

Throughout her life, Mrs. Anthony was active athletically. She enjoyed "competing in anything that resulted in someone being declared a winner," Kennedy said. She especially enjoyed tennis and equestrian events. She even competed in rodeos while spending summers at the family ranch near Stanley, Idaho.

Once, when attending a convention of newspaper publishers, she soundly defeated Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham on the tennis court. Kennedy asked her why she was so tough on Graham. "Kay would have done the same thing to me, if she could," Mrs. Anthony told her son.

Mrs. Anthony continued to snow ski and to play tennis into her late 70s.

For all her wealth, Mrs. Anthony lived without celebrity, able to fly by private jet into the airport at Sydney, Australia, and walk unnoticed past the paparazzi hoping for a shot of a more famous media owner, Rupert Murdoch, who used the same jetport and parked nearby.

Her wealth consisted largely of trust holdings in an operating company. She often donated half her income, through a personal foundation and through the James M. Cox Jr. Foundation. She preferred to make contributions quietly, often anonymously, and wanted the extent of her charitable giving to remain private.

Mrs. Anthony's interest in animals led her to become one of the leading financial contributors to Colorado State University's work in equine orthopedic research. Two $3 million gifts — one from Mrs. Anthony and another through the James M. Cox Jr. Foundation, which she chaired — funded research at the university in veterinary and human health.

One gift endowed the Barbara Cox Anthony chair in equine orthopedic research, which is for the benefit of horses as well as advanced human orthopedic treatments. The other gift was to endow a chair in the Animal Cancer Center, which likewise collaborates with health foundations to address similar problems in humans.

"The veterinary scientists who are engaged in the kind of research that will ultimately benefit both animal and human health are deserving of our support," Mrs. Anthony said in endowing the chairs in 2002.

She also funded a chair at the University of Sydney.

In Hawaii, beneficiaries included the Aloha United Way, a state organization of police officers, homeless shelters, animal rescue groups, hospitals, the YMCA, the Salvation Army and the Honolulu Academy of Arts. She was one of two founders and served for more than two decades as chair of the board of trustees of La Pietra-Hawaii School for Girls, which opened in 1964 as a college prep school for the island's girls, about half of whom attended with financial aid mostly paid for by Mrs. Anthony.

Mrs. Anthony is survived by her two children, five grandchildren and four stepchildren.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2437 or jdebrosse@DaytonDailyNews.com.