Southern Nevada pioneer, activist Wilcox dies at 98

Thursday, Jan. 24, 2002 | 8:38 a.m.

The eldest of 12 children, Jesma Wilcox always put the young ones first.

When a fire broke out in her Pioche home in 1934, she was determined to rescue her six children. After spiriting the older ones to safety, Wilcox braved the flames to go back in for 2-year-old Peaches, who was asleep in a back room.

When Wilcox returned to the front door with her toddler wrapped in a blanket, she found it was blocked by a huge piano that neighbors had tried to save from the fire. Wilcox slid Peaches across the melting varnish atop the piano into the arms of rescuers before others pulled her from the flames.

"My sister's life from the time she was young to the very end was taking care of her family," Ronald Stewart said. "She lived and worked to make things better for all of us."

Jesma Stewart Wilcox, a Las Vegas pioneer and co-founder of the group that became Opportunity Village, died Monday at the Village Oaks Assisted Living Center. She was 98.

Services will be 1 p.m. Saturday at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Gateway-Wyoming chapel. Visitation will be 4-6 p.m. Friday at Bunker's Mortuary.

"My mother truly loved being the matriarch of the family -- she ate it up," Jesma "Peaches" Carter said. "Christmas gatherings were always a big affair with her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. She would sit as queen of the court. And she was sharp to the end, remembering all of the names and their birthdays."

She was born Jesma Stewart on March 24, 1903, to rancher William Stewart and the former Artimesia Snow Seegmiller in the mining town of Delamar, now a ghost town near Alamo. As a baby, Wilcox traveled by horse-drawn wagon in 1905 to Las Vegas, then a railroad watering stop, where her family lived in a tent. The family attended the original auction of land in Las Vegas, but did not buy any.

They soon moved to Panaca, where she graduated from Lincoln County High School. On Dec. 19, 1923, she married her high school sweetheart Carlyle Wilcox, a longtime Southern Nevada schoolteacher, high school principal and artist. He preceded her in death in 1982.

They came to Las Vegas in 1942 and leased the old Helen J. Stewart Ranch a year later. Carlyle gave up teaching to run the country store at the ranch, and their children played in the nearby Old Mormon Fort. When the fort was restored as a city and state landmark in 1999, Wilcox was honored for her dedication to preserving the site.

When her son Thomas "Tommy" Dee Wilcox was born with Down syndrome in the 1940s, the Wilcoxes joined other area parents of mentally disabled children and formed the Nevada Association for Retarded Children. The organization became Opportunity Village, which has since trained hundreds of mentally challenged people to be self-sufficient.

"Jesma was one of the most social people you would want to meet," said her son-in-law,Max Leavitt of Las Vegas.

She was a member of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, Ladies Literary Club and the LDS Golden Girls.

In addition to her daughter, son and brother, all of Las Vegas, Wilcox is survived by son Carlyle Wilcox of Grand Junction, Colo.; brother Willard Stewart of Henderson; a sister, Mishie Leavitt of Las Vegas; 26 grandchildren; 87 great-grandchildren; and 15 great-great-grandchildren.

In addition to her husband, Wilcox was preceded in death by a son John Wilcox, daughters Marba Rose Leavitt and Cherril Mendenhall, six brothers and two sisters.