Counting on Liana

By DAVE SCHEIBER / USF Foundation

Liana Fernandez Fox looks outside a first-floor window of the Marshall Student Center on a recent

breezy, sun-splashed afternoon and marvels at the sight. She sees more than a steady wave of young people walking to and from class, more than the tree-lined landscape and the large bronze bulls overlooking the MLK plaza in the distance. She sees a scene that holds her own story – from the wide-eyed Ybor City teen whose life was changed by USF to the career educator whose passion and boundless energy have helped the lives of so many others.

In her mind’s eye, she has a clear view through the decades – picturing the campus as it was in the mid-1960s, covered with more sand than sidewalks and barren patches devoid of greenery. “We used to joke that our logo should have sandspurs – it was really nasty walking around back then,” she says, punctuating the memory with one of her infectious laughs.

“And all these trees you see now? There might have been one or two back then I think. I was president of the Alumni Association when we celebrated the completion of MLK Plaza in 1997. And I thought, ‘We were so busy surviving, just going from day to day and trying to pass, we didn’t realize we were part of history.’ We were living it.”

Fox lived it fully as a member of one of USF’s early classes, the daughter of loving, hard-working and highly protective parents of Hispanic and Sicilian descent. Back

Retired HCC Math Professor Liana Fernandez Fox Offers a Window On USF, Old Ybor and a Lifelong Tampa Love Story – and Now Her Sights Are Set On a New WLP Scholarship

Liana and husband Bob Fox today -- and when she earned her master’s degree from USF in 1980

then, the relatively new university offered local high school students a viable option that hadn’t existed before: a chance to attend a four-year public institution in Tampa Bay without having to leave home, since USF provided the much needed access and affordability of a higher education.

“If this university hadn’t been built when and where it was,” she says, “an entire generation – especially Latin females – wouldn’t have gone to college.”

USF became a formative stop for her in a journey that would entwine many chapters – falling in love, marrying and raising a family with her hometown sweetheart, Bob Fox; becoming a fixture as a mathematics professor at Hillsborough Community College for 33 years – and simultaneously at USF for nearly half that span; returning to earn her master’s and PhD at USF after actually completing her bachelor’s degree at Florida State; and a prominent presence through the years with USF’s Alumni Association and Women in Leadership & Philanthropy.

Today, her impact with the WLP organization is being felt in a powerful new way. She and her husband have established an endowed scholarship to support USF transfer students from Hillsborough Community College – cementing the enduring relationship Fox has with both institutions. The scholarship goes hand in hand with the new FUSE program, which assists transfer students from HCC and colleges around the state complete their bachelor’s degrees in the USF System.

“We’re really excited to find out who the first recipient will be,” she says. “My hope is that it will help a student who’ll have a profile like I had. My parents were so hard working but couldn’t give me any advice about college, because they’d never gone. So we just want to be a support for someone like that.”

That lucky someone, and those in the future, will be linked to quite a legacy, indeed.

• • •

Liana’s story is deeply entwined with that of her husband, Bob – and a mirror of life in old Tampa.

She grew up in a tight-knit family near Ybor City. Her father, Frank Fernandez, had Cuban roots, and was a natural entrepreneur who always ran or worked in multiple businesses simultaneously. “When he was working as ad manager at Sears, he hired this sweet young woman named Rose to work in his department – and she turned out to be my mom!” Liana says, smiling.

Frank and Rose married, and she soon became his business assistant. Liana was the first born of their three children, followed by two brothers. Even as a little girl, she dreamed of becoming a teacher, practicing holding class at home on her unsuspecting brothers. Math was always her favorite subject and she was a standout student at Tampa’s Sacred Heart Academy, winning the school’s math award as a senior.

That class consisted of only 25 students and most had no college plans. Liana was among them, getting no pressure at all from her parents or teachers. “Then, I had to take a 12th grade test,” she recalls. “I had absolutely no idea about it, but that was the score we would use to apply to college.” She aced it, and suddenly the idea of college seemed more appealing. The test paved her way to admittance in 1964 to eight-year-old USF – the one college her parents would okay due to its proximity to home.

“When you came from a Latin family, if you were a girl – and the oldest child, no less – you didn’t leave town,” she says. “It simply wasn’t allowed. My first choice was actually St. Mary’s Dominican in New Orleans, but my father was appalled and that was the end of that!”

Liana still remembers her USF student number: 15976, meaning she was the 15,976th USF attendee ever.

She enrolled in the fourth year that the university actually accepted freshmen, and immediately made the University Center her home away from home. Most students were commuters, so the building that would one day be enlarged into the Phyllis C. Marshall Student Center was the prime gathering spot – the heartbeat of the campus. It was a site for socializing and lending support, and Liana learned she needed plenty in math – since her small high school hadn’t prepared her in trigonometry or any advanced studies. “The level of math I eventually chose to teach in my career had a lot to do with how much I struggled when I first got to USF,” she reflects.

But with help from her sorority sisters in Tri SIS, which later became Alpha Delta Pi, Liana began to excel and expand her school involvement. She played a key role, assisting University Center director Phyllis Marshall in helping USF’s sororities and fraternities go from small clubs to affiliation on the national level. “Phyllis said that either we all went national, or none would go – she wasn’t going to let us split,” Liana says. In short order, she was sorority vice president and pledge trainer for 90 young women, while juggling her studies. She could feel the pressure mounting and, by her senior year, decided she needed to make a change.

That’s where a West Tampa boy she knew from early childhood, Bob Fox, came into the picture.

• • •

The Fernandez and Fox families had been friends for years, connected by two family members who had married one another. But there was no

spark between Liana and Bob – not at first, that is.

Their friendship was always casual until midway through college. Bob attended Tampa’s Jesuit High School and went off to Florida State. But they kept in touch on breaks and vacations, and during their junior year, Bob and a Tampa buddy named “Doc” began hanging out with Liana, strictly as friends. “My dad says, ‘It doesn’t look nice that you go out with two boys, and I said, ‘Dad, it’s Bob and Doc – we’re just friends.’ ” But when Doc went back to school, it turned into something more. Liana and Bob soon became an item, and when she became overwhelmed by all her commitments at USF, he suggested she transfer to FSU for her senior year.

“My parents were thrilled I was dating Bob Fox – the son of their friends Fred and Rose Fox – so they had no problem with me leaving town now,” she says. Things moved fast. They became engaged during the summer after their junior year in 1967 and got married as seniors. And their adventure together was underway.

Bob began a career in hospitality, moving with his bride to Cleveland to work for the Stouffer’s restaurant chain. By the end of the year, Liana, now pregnant, was homesick, so Bob quit his job and they moved back to Tampa. “You

Liana and Bob on their wedding day while still attending Florida State.

should have seen the reception he got from my family for bringing their expecting daughter home!” she recalls with a laugh. “It was like he was king forever! ‘Can we get you something, Bob? … What would you like now, Bob?’ ” Everything fell right into place. Within months, he was hired as part of the charter management team for the brand new Tampa International Airport. Weeks after it opened in 1971, Liana and Bob welcomed their first child, a son.

Bob and one of his brothers eventually bought their father’s small dental laboratory business in Tampa and would grow it for the next 40 years. Liana, meanwhile, was about to chart her own course. In Tallahassee, she had dabbled in a statistics job with the state transportation department, analyzing traffic patterns – even helping redesign the Key Biscayne causeway at the request of Secret Service agents protecting then-President Nixon. Now, her math skills were once again about to serve her well.

A friend called to tell her an algebra teacher had just left Tampa Catholic and the job was hers if she wanted it. With a new baby, she was unsure. But her mother willingly pitched in to care for the infant, and a career was born. She remained at Tampa Catholic for five years, resigning to stay at home when the couple’s second son arrived. But soon enough, she received another life-changing call – an offer to teach math part-time in 1977 on HCC’s Ybor campus.

It was there that Liana met and got to know the college’s highly respected administrator, Dr. Sandra Wilson, who was the first African-American woman ever to earn a PhD at USF. She became a mentor, advocate and dear friend as Liana moved to full-time status in 1980 and embarked on her life’s work as a beloved math teacher. Along the way, she helped countless students excel, chaired numerous college committees, and was elected president of HCC’s faculty union. She also found time to earn her master’s from USF in 1980. “Liana was in my graduate class in history of mathematics – and we still keep in touch to this day,” says USF math professor Fred Zerla. “She’s absolutely a terrific, caring person and just involved in everything. She’s just so dedicated to helping people. That’s what she does and who she is.”

As a full-time HCC faculty member, Liana spent 15 years on USF Tampa campus helping freshmen meet their mathematics requirements. “The snack bar on the second floor of Cooper Hall was my office, and the cashier would take messages from my students,” she recollects. With encouragement and support from USF professors, Drs. Don and Betty Lichtenberg, she earned her doctorate in Mathematics Education from USF in 1998.

For much of that span, some 30 years, she remained highly active with the League of Women Voters of Hillsborough County, serving as president for a stint, and helping produce some 150 town halls and debates (including the much-publicized 1994 showdown between Florida governor Lawton Chiles and challenger Jeb Bush).

“It’s been an amazing ride,” she says. And it’s one she can’t even imagine taking without her husband of 48 years. Like Liana, Bob’s loyalties lie in multiple places – they have helped create a scholarship at HCC four years ago in the name of her

The Fox family grows – while Liana’s teaching career blossoms.

parents, Frank and Rose Fernandez. And though he’s forever a ’Nole at heart, he still backs the Bulls, attending football games through the years with Liana as dedicated season ticket holders. When it came time to create a new scholarship, Bob and Liana had no doubt where it should be.

“We sold a piece of property this year and wanted to do something meaningful,” he says. “So we considered several options and decided to do the scholarship right here at USF, and through WLP.”

After all, it’s where the story began on a sandy, sunbaked campus, and has blossomed through the decades to the vibrant view just outside the Marshall Center window.

Then and Now: The combined Fernandez and Fox Families in 1978 – and Liana and Bob’s Family Today