Today is Part 2 of photographer Ida Wilcox’s life story. Ms. Wilcox was a photographer from Salt Lake City, Utah; in Part 1 about her life, we learned about her skills as both a photographer and business woman.
Today I want to share a few things from the rest of her story that didn’t fit into my first post.
1928 was a very successful year for Ida Wilcox – not only did she get awards from the National Photographers’ Association that year, her photography business in Salt Lake City was also doing well. In May of that year she even got a nice writeup in a local paper:
Goodwin’s Weekly, May 19, 1928.
That same year, a stunt pilot was also garnering a number of headlines in the Salt Lake City newspapers:
In late Spring 1928, Ida Wilcox organizes a special ride in an airplane for a 103-year-old Civil War veteran named M. Reeves. Mr. Reeves, who was blind, dreamed about going up in a plane before he died. Ida reaches out to Jack Arnould, that daredevil pilot, and persuades him to take Mr. Reeves up in his plane. Here’s a photo of Reeves Arnould, and 2 other people standing in front of the plane before the special flight (the photo is clipped from a larger article about the flight):
I realize the scan of that photo is a little hard to make out, so here’s a portrait of Jack Arnould taken by Ida Wilcox that is published in that same newspaper a week later:
June 16, 1928
(Portrait by Ida Wilcox)
Apparently, Ida and the pilot got along very well: 10 days after that photo was published, on June 25, 1928, Ida and the pilot got married!
Now, the groom’s name on the marriage certificate is Jay Arnould, not Jack as it is in the newspaper article. And it’s Jay Arnould, not Jack Arnould, named on the papers when she files from divorce from the aviator in March 1929. Based on a variety of sources, though, it’s clear that Jay Arnould and Jack Arnould are the same person, despite the different first names.
Actually, the name of that man is a puzzle. Jay/Jack Arnould’s birth name may really have been Arnold J. H. Schovan. Arnold Schovan was a man who turns out to be an oft-married smooth talker, apparently – he is married and divorced a lot, in a lot of different places.
It’s complicated … and it’s hard to say what was true and what wasn’t about this man, and also when he starts using the name Jay or Jack Arnould.
Interestingly, there was a Jay H. Arnould who got a medal for bravery in WWI. But was that the same man as the man who is the daredevil stunt pilot in 1928? Who knows. There is much to his story that doesn’t meet the eye, at least when trying to do the research for this post. (Many thanks to my husband, Chris, for tracking down the information on Arnold Schovan and discovering that Arnold Schovan and Jay/Jack Arnould were all the same person).
OK, well, enough about that. I don’t want to get too bogged down on Ida Wilcox’s (ex-)husband’s story today; it would be easy to do since it is so complicated. Instead, we’re going to focus the rest of this post on our photographer, Ida Wilcox.
As it turns out, poor Ida was unlucky in love not once, but twice. Long before the saga with the pilo unfolded, back in 1911, 16-year-old Ida eloped with steam engine fireman Robert A. Shercliff. When Ida’s mother got wind of it, she tracked the couple down in Denver, Colorado. Ida, being underage, was dragged back home to Utah by her mother, where Ida’s marriage to Shercliff was ended. Shercliff doesn’t seem to enter into Ida’s story again after that.
As I said, Ida was unlucky in love.
But perhaps she was was able later to take some comfort in her successes, as a photographer…
…and also as an inventor. You see, Ida Wilcox was a prolific inventor. In addition to inventing various apparati for photography, she also came up with plans for a ship’s armour system — for which she was granted a patent in 1937.
Patent granted April 20, 1937
Successful as a photographer as well as an inventor – that was Ida Wilcox’s more complete story.
There was so much to say about Ida’s photography and business/marketing acumen in my earlier post about her that I didn’t have room for all the additional information, so today’s post gives you a further taste of her full multi-faceted story.
