Ines Angelica Wildner-Fox, a former teacher at the Montauk School who started the school’s English as a foreign language program and co-founded the hamlet’s food pantry, died of pulmonary fibrosis on July 17 at Hope Hospice in Lehigh Acres, Fla. She was 73 and had been ill for six months.
Born in Buenos Aires on April 17, 1946, to the former Angelica de Oro and Alberto Wildner, she attended nursing school in Argentina, and moved to New York City in 1970 to work as an exchange nurse at Presbyterian Hospital.
She married Ernest W. Fox in 1973 at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk. A few years later, the couple moved to the hamlet, where they lived for 46 years.
She had been a volunteer English teacher at the church’s Little Flower pre-school before her decades-long career at the Montauk School. “She was a gem, she was dedicated, and she was a wonderful person,” said Jack Perna, the school’s superintendent. In 1984, along with Francis Ecker, a faculty colleague, she started the Montauk Food Pantry to assist school families who needed help providing food for their children. She retired from the school in 2010, and moved with her husband to Fort Myers, Fla., four years later.
An animal lover who always had cats and dogs, Ms. Wildner-Fox loved to windsurf and go sailing with her daughter, Ana Fox of East Windsor, N.J., who survives, and her husband, who lives in Lehigh Acres. She is also survived by four grandchildren, a sister, Angelica Almeyra of Fort Lauderdale, and a brother, Fernando Wildner of Buenos Aires.
She was a member of St. Raphael Catholic Church in Lehigh Acres. Funeral services were held at the Hodges Funeral Home in Lehigh Acres on July 17, followed by burial at Lee Memorial Park there.
A memorial Mass will be said in Montauk at 11 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 16, at St. Therese of Lisieux. A reception at the parish center will follow.
The family has suggested memorial donations to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, P.O. Box 901, Wainscott 11975.