The "fix" for this was to boot into recovery mode, re-mounting the drive as read/write, going to the main root (cd /), and then chmod +rx .. After a reboot, everything looks to be back to normal.
Just to be clear for future readers who might come across this as the accepted answer, there are concerns with the chmod +x solution as a general solution. This specific question appears to have been the users home directory so some of the concerns below may be low, but if this was applied to a business server and impacted multiple users or other data directories the solution is not suggested.
On the positive side, this step would permit the user to regain access to the files so they can be copied off to a backup medium to prevent further loss. And at the end of the day, that's the primary goal during any data recovery effort.
The biggest concern is that the original files might have had specific permissions applied that are now missing. Some programs - specifically ssh - enforce file permissions to further ensure their security and will not work if the +rw permission is set on its folder and files.
Another concern is if this is applied at the root (/) folder recursively, there will be other files that might be open for anyone on the system to view and modify. In a business setting where the server might contain sensitive data (PCI/financial, or healthcare/HIPAA information) this access could lead to audit findings and repercussions.
In a personal/home environment this recovery is probably perfectly acceptable. Just note that some things might be silently broken or act weirdly.
In a business environment, using this recovery to regain access to the data might be used, but ultimately any dramatic change like this should be resolved by re-installing the server and recovering from a backup.
( You DO have a current backup, don't you? ;-) )
