2 CAPITAL TIMES, December 7, 1989
GENERAL NEWS
Business is a pleasure for Hummelstown woman
Mary Jane Thompson
Capital Times Staff
As customers enter Fox's doll
hospital in Hummelstown, dolls of all
shapes and sizes surround them. A sign
reading "Dr. Mary Fox - Admitting
Desk" is propped on the desk . Behind
it, sits "Doctor" Mary Fox, a 75-year
old woman with soft grey hair wearing a
doctor's white coat.
Fox has six part-time helpers. The
second floor of the hospital houses the
"operating" room, which resembles
Santa's workshop. Doll parts are
hanging everywhere. Here, Fox and her
helpers cut out patterns and sew new
dresses for the dolls, resculpt a cracked
face or damaged headwith clay, and
replace missing hair. Sometimes they
spray paint the hair on. They may even
replace the hair with real human hair
donated by the owner of the (1011. In
addition to dolls, they restuff stuffed
animals.
Fox enjoys her work. She calls
herself a "jack of all trades." She learned
what she knows from hands-on
experience and from working in a dress
factory. "I am not an expert in any one
thing, but," she says, "I do have a gift
for cutting out any size doll dress
without using a pattern."
"It all began accidentally, about 40 to
44 I wasrft rubbing
it in-I just wanted
Eddie to know
the score of
last night's we.,,
50 years ago," she recalls. A friend of
hers admired a doll in a magazine. Fox
decided to surprise her friend by
recreating the doll for her. When Fox
presented the doll to her, everyone raved.
She started getting requests from all
over.
One day, a woman brought her about
400 dolls to repair. "Where am I going
to put them all?" She thought. Her'
husband helped her by restringing the
dolls: Restringing is done by attaching
the limbs and head to the body using
string. "I worked til four in the morning
some nights" she says. "The people kept
coming, bringing me dolls that could
not part with."
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The right choice.
"Most of my customers are not
'children," Fox declares. Most of the
dolls she "admits" to the hospital are
family heirlooms. "It is very sentimental
to them," she says. "They can't give
them up no matter how ragged they are."
When one customer seemed anxious to
recieve her repaired doll, her friend asked,
"she's like one of the family, right?"
Fox also sells dolls ranging from a
Betsy Ross doll to a Shirley Temple
doll. "All the dolls I have come from
private homes, I only like to buy from
people I know," she says.
Mary Fox belongs to the Harrisburg
Doll Club and has a collection of her
own dolls. "I've always regarded my
business as a hobby," she says.
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