Larry Dean Cox, lifelong educator, died on April 28, 2023, after a difficult battle with gastrointestinal stromal sarcoma and multiple myeloma in Guttenberg. Larry was born in rural Mahaska County, at the home of his grandparents, Oliver and Bertha Mason, to Evert and Ina Mae Cox on April 19, 1937. He graduated from Gibson High School in 1955, earned his bachelor’s degree from Iowa State Teachers College in 1960 and a master’s degree from the University of Northern Iowa in 1976. He was the first in his family to earn both of those degrees.