Grants Help Crown Hill Foundation Fulfill Its Mission

The Crown Hill Foundation frequently seeks charitable grants to help fulfill its mission of education and preservation. Grants received from the Brooks and Joan Fortune Family Foundation, Dovie Stewart Cox & Chester A. Cox, Sr. Memorial Fund, and Standiford H. Cox Fund are recent examples of such generous philanthropy.

Brooks and Joan Fortune Family Foundation

Brooks and Joan Fortune met in 1939 while working at Eli Lilly and Company. He was a research scientist, and she was a medical laboratory technician. They worked together developing products that allowed diabetic patients to check their glucose levels at home and thus better control their insulin intake.

Eventually, these would evolve into the basis of all bedside medical testing available today. Brooks continued to rise at Lilly, helping to develop antibiotics and the safe manufacturing of the Salk Polio vaccine. He served as an Executive Vice-President and member of the Board until his retirement in 1971.

The Fortunes were married 49 years. In 1988, their Foundation was formed to support museums, education, churches, and the arts. Their generosity continues today under the guidance of their three children and their grandchildren. The Foundation’s grant to the Crown Hill Foundation was used to fund the Butterfly/Pollinator Garden and the adjacent Nature Trail with its custom-made accessible picnic tables/learning stations.

Dovie Stewart Cox & Chester A. Cox, Sr. Memorial Fund and Standiford H. Cox Fund of CICF

Standiford “Stan” H. Cox was born in Brazil, IN, one of five children of parents Dovie Stewart Cox and Chester A. Cox, Sr. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a WWI veteran and truck driver. Standiford was his high school valedictorian and graduated with honors with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Indiana University. He had a long career at Eli Lilly and Company, retiring after 32 years.

His employment began in 1957 as its first Black chemist, and he served in many technical and non-technical positions over the years. He was a member of many professional organizations and was a former board member of Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana. One of his greatest joys was the endowing of the Standiford H. Cox Professorship in Biochemistry at Indiana University in Bloomington. During his lifetime, Mr. Cox established two funds with the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF), one in his name and one to honor his parents. The Standiford H. Cox Fund supports the restoration, preservation, operation, and ongoing maintenance of African American historic sites in Indiana, and the Dovie Stewart Cox & Chester A. Cox, Sr. Memorial Fund provides support for Lost Creek Community Grove at the Lost Creek Settlement near Terre Haute, one of the state’s earliest settlements of free people of color.

The $7,500 grant to the Crown Hill Foundation is being used to purchase tools to clean and repair the gravestones of African Americans buried at Crown Hill. Milt Thompson, a prominent entertainment, entrepreneurial, and business attorney, civic leader, and philanthropist himself, chairs Crown Hill Foundation’s African American Advisory Committee, which will help identify the monuments most in need of some loving care.

Locations:
Brooks Fortune (1913 – 2005) and Joan Whitlock Fortune (1915 – 1988) are entombed in Garden Mausoleum V, Crypt E-11; GPS (39.8274849,-86.1716583)

Standiford Cox (1934 – 2019) is inurned in the Community Mausoleum, Niche F-176; GPS (39.8271486,-86.1732196)

Dovie Stewart Cox (1907 – 1996) and Chester Arthur Cox Sr. (1895 – 1968) are buried in Cottage Hill Cemetery in Brazil, Indiana.