In 1929, the Cox family sold their farm and moved to Middletown, Ohio, where his parents worked in a paper mill.
Due to poor eyesight, Cox was deployed in stateside assignments in the Army Medical Corps and the Supply and Logistics Division, rising to the rank of captain and working at the Pentagon by the end of World War II.
Called up to serve during the Korean War, Cox returned to work in supply and logistics at the Pentagon.
Based in Frederick, he primarily served congregations in the rural Appalachian western region of the diocese.
[3] In 1980, Cox accepted a call from Gerald N. McAllister to serve as assistant bishop in the growing Diocese of Oklahoma.
He was offered the role under a newly adopted Episcopal Church canon that allowed bishops consecrated in another jurisdiction to be appointed by the ordinary without being elected as a suffragan with tenure or right of succession as a coadjutor.
[1] In March 2004, he joined fellow retired bishops C. FitzSimons Allison, Maurice Benitez, Alex D. Dickson and William C. Wantland in performing confirmations and celebrating the Eucharist for dissident Episcopal congregations in the Diocese of Ohio without the permission of the local bishop.