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KNOX -- Olive Juliet Pettitt Knox was born on the Ides of March, 1912. She was the second child of William Pettitt and Olivia Riis Pettitt and the sister of an older brother, Henry, and dear younger sister, Katherine. Her childhood was spent either on Keewaydin, the Darien, Connecticut estate of a family of railroad wealth, the Auchinclosses; at the Auchincloss' summer place in Kennebunkport, Maine; or for one brief, but formative, episode in New York City. She fell in love with the City and retained a lifelong romance with it. Raised as the child of servants, she graduated from Darien High School, with honors, in 1930, took the train to New York, and landed a job at the firm of Alan, Klapp, Frazier in an era before carbon paper or erasable type, but full of Depression era pay cuts, and five and a half day weeks. In 1937 her boyfriend, Richard Knox, changed her life forever for the better by inviting her to accompany him, unmarried, to Europe. She did so, and made of the trip the central event of her personal mythology. Upon returning, she got the first job she sought because, of the line of girls looking for work, she stood out as the only one wearing gloves. That was Olive. In those days, Olive, her sister Kate, and their beaus, Richard and Wally Myers, were an inseparable foursome. She and Richard married in 1939 and they moved to Connecticut where she worked for the Vice President of Columbia records, Paul Southard, and a zany crew of artists. In 1947, after Dick returned from service in Europe, her only child, a son Wallace, was born. The family moved west to Albuquerque, NM, where she became the secretary, executive organizer, and mother confessor for the Department of History at the University of New Mexico. Her life there was filled with the kind of devoted friendships a person of her caliber inspires; Virginia McGiboney and Ed Lieuwen come particularly to mind. In her last years, she moved to Los Angeles, CA, to be near her son, his wife, Beth Garfield, and her two adored grandchildren, Aviva and Tamara. She died there at peace with the world and her place in it on the Ides of October, 2005. She was a lady. The old fashioned kind. We shall not see her like again. There will be a Memorial Service for her in the Alumni Memorial Chapel at the University of New Mexico at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 4, 2005.
        Published on: Sun November 06, 2005