Born into a Churches of God home in western Pennsylvania, Fox first came to Findlay College as a student in 1915. After serving with the Thirty-seventh Ohio Division in France and Belgium during World War I, he returned to Findlay, received his A.B. in 1920 and his M.A. in 1922. Also in 1922, he married Viola Bauman who had graduated from Findlay that year. His early professional career included teaching in high schools in Tiffin, Ohio and Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
He served as a history professor and an administrator at the University of Dubuque in Iowa. He received his Ph.D. in 1941 from the University of Iowa. At one time, he served as a lay pastor in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and was formally ordained into the ministry of the Churches of God by the West Pennsylvania Eldership in 1947.
Reporting to the general eldership of Findlay College as president elect in June 1947, Fox expressed his desire for Findlay College to be a leader in the field of liberal arts and theological education. Further, he stressed the role of the institution in nurturing and increasing the religious experience of its students. At the time, the institution that would become Winebrenner Theological Seminary had been established as a graduate school of theology for the College and his plan included leadership among institutions in the North Central Association of America and the American Association of Theological Schools. Recognizing the lack of diversity on the College Board of Trustees pointed out by accrediting boards, Fox endorsed the appointment of alumnus and influential businessman William Burdette Brewer to the board in 1956. Brewer, also a member of the College First Church of God, was the president of Cooper Tire and Rubber Company in Findlay and worked with Fox and other members of the board to develop a businessman's advisory committee. The committee brought to the College expertise not previously on the board of trustees, including business and investment practices and the ability to bring the institution's needs to the community's attention. Among the group's recommendations were raising tuition to cover salaries that were 17 percent below what was paid teachers at the local high school and creating a four-year business administration degree.
Fox's work as president also influenced campus expansion. The North Central Association had frowned upon Findlay's student housing when it denied the College accreditation in March 1948, and Fox worked to remedy the situation with new facilities including the erection of Myers Hall and Lovett Hall. Also, the library on the first floor of Old Main was extended to the south to provide room for an additional 125,000 volumes and a student union called “The Cave" was placed in the basement of the extension.
Suffering from arthritis for most of his presidency and rarely seen without his cane, Fox retired on Feb. 1, 1959. He was made president-emeritus and the trustees also voted to confer upon him the honorary doctor of divinity degree. Less than a year later, on Nov. 24, 1959, he died in an automobile accident near Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. Fox was related to several former faculty, staff and students at the College, including John F. Fox, the first janitor, and Charles Trout Fox, twice acting president and the institution's first dean. In 1966, Fox Residence Hall for men was constructed in honor of past presidents Charles T. Fox and H. Clifford Fox.
President Fox as a student with some of his classmates: Paul Bowser, Clifford Fox, H. S. Brinser, unknown.