Highway dedication ceremony set for Los Banos community leader, educator Joe Cox

A highway dedication ceremony to honor late community leader and educator Joe Cox is set to take place in Los Banos next week.

The Joe Cox Memorial Highway outdoor public sign dedication ceremony is scheduled to be held Saturday, Aug. 7 in the front of the Merced College Los Banos Campus at 22240 Highway 152 in Los Banos.

Saturday’s event comes as a result of successful campaign by Los Banos Rotary to erect signs reading “Joe Cox Memorial Highway” on Highway 152 in Los Banos. Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, also wrote the bill that made the honor for Cox possible.

Cox, who died in 2018, was a World War II veteran, high school agriculture teacher, a high school and junior high principal and then a board member of the Los Banos Unified District, according to a column written by Toni Huarte, president of the Los Banos Rotary Club.

As an ag teacher he served as agriculture department chair at Los Banos High and led a group of his students to receive first place at the state and then national levels of the dairy judging contests.

He served as the principal of Los Banos High School for 13 years and Los Banos Junior High for six years, as well as serving 12 years on the school board. When he was the Los Banos High principal, he helped Merced College start a branch campus in Los Banos in 1971, accoridng to Huarte’s column.

In 1993 Joe was nominated by the Merced County Area Agency for the Aging to represent Los Banos in the California Senior Legislature and was appointed to the Senior Assembly.

As a young man Joe served in World War II on the U.S.S. Orion and U.S.S Batfish submarines and later served in the Navy in the Korean War. He devoted much of his life thereafter to supporting the Los Banos Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Los Banos American Legion, Huarte wrote in his column.

After he retired, Joe devoted many years to honoring his fellow submarine crew members who died in World War II by planting trees, at both the San Joaquin National Cemetery in Santa Nella and at the permanent Los Banos college campus on Highway 152.

Joe was a longtime active member of the Los Banos Rotary Club, joining in 1966. In 1990 he served as the Rotary District Governor.

For more information about the event, call Gene Lieb at (209) 704-3831.

This story was originally published July 29, 2021 at 11:56 AM.