Obituary: John Anthony Iacovelli

A funeral service for John Anthony Iacovelli will be at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at Walton's Funeral Home in Reno.

Viewing will be from 3-6 p.m. today at Walton's, 875 W. Second St.

Mr. Iacovelli died May 16, 2003. at St. Mary's Regional Medical Center in Reno. He was born Giovanni Antonio Iacovelli in Manhattan on May 14, 1921, the youngest son of Italian immigrants . He was 82.

Mr. Iacovelli grew up in the Yorkville section of New York City's Upper East Side and attended Strueben Muller Textile High School in Chelsea, N.Y., the first magnet high school for art and design. He studied fencing with George Santelli.

He worked for the Works Progress Administration, digging sewers in Harlem and for the 1939 World's Fair, where he met Pablo Picasso.

In 1942, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a cartographer. He worked in Hollywood at MGM Studios in the sculpture shop on the war effort. He was honorably discharged in 1946, and opened the first Arthur Murray Dance Studio franchise in Las Vegas with his first wife, Patsy King. They were divorced in 1949.

He worked briefly as a performer at the Playhouse in the Sky at Lake Tahoe under the pseudonym of John Darrow. In 1950, he won the American Artists Magazine award for his pair of still-life watercolors that were published in the magazine. New Yorker magazine published one of his illustrations the same year.

Mr. Iacovelli attended the University of Nevada, Reno, under the G.I. Bill and earned a bachelor's of art degree in art. He worked as an assistant curator at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City and as a freelance art appraiser. He taught and choreographed dance in the old state building, where he met and married Dariel Durham, one of his students.

He also taught for 30 years for the Washoe County School District, teaching art and drama at Reno High School and then art at Vaughn Middle School. He developed a new technique for teaching art called "flash painting" and taught it to his colleagues. He built an American Indian totem pole that was at the Vaughn campus for 20 years.

He acted in many plays at the Reno Little Theater, wrote poetry, and taught fencing for the Reno Recreation Department and at Truckee Meadows Community College. He was the first fencing master in Nevada. He was a fencing trainer at Squaw Valley for the 1976 U.S. Olympic Trials and founded the Silver Blades Fencing Club in Reno.

He designed and sold jewelry and was a prolific painter and sculptor.

Up until his death, he taught at TMCC and for Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church. He was the oldest teacher in the state.

He was preceded in death by his wife.

Among his survivors are his daughters Dariel Wines of Elko, Violet Iacovelli of Carson City, Victoria Williams of Kingman, Ariz., and Angaela Iacovelli of Reno; sons Cameron of Sparks and John of Davis, Calif.; and 10 grandchildren.

Donations in his name may be made to the Community Cabinet, P.O. Box 12192, Reno, NV 89510.

Walton's of Reno is in charge of arrangements.