SALT LAKE CITY — When a family names all of its sons Jack — and continues the tradition over multiple generations — it can be tough to find the one you’re looking for.
The Jack we wanted to find borrowed four books from the Salt Lake City Library’s Sprague Branch in 1930.
“DO NOT LOSE THIS CARD,” Jack Tripp’s library card states, its edges smudged blue and slightly tattered. “LOSS OF CARD DOES NOT RELEASE YOU.”
For nearly 90 years, Tripp’s card remained hidden at the Sprague Branch in Sugar House, where it had fallen behind a bookshelf. It was finally unearthed last spring — and for that, a clogged storm grate is to thank. The library’s basement flooded in 2017 after a downpour overflowed nearby Parley’s Creek. With the aforementioned storm grate clogged, Parley’s Creek rerouted itself straight toward the library, submerging its basement in more than five feet of water.
The library branch, which has been there since 1928, began a full remodel last spring. Construction crews found Tripp’s card, along with a handful of books, all of which had fallen behind the bookshelves through the years. These missing books were copyrighted 1917, 1945, 1954 and 1955, and were recently put on display at the Sprague Firehouse Express, a smaller library branch just a few blocks from the original Sprague location.
If you Google “Jack Tripp Utah,” a lot of names show up (more on that later). Who was this particular Jack Tripp? What was he like? And could we find him?
“I’m the only one left,” Lynne Stapel said. “Everybody’s gone.”
On a recent afternoon at her home in Midvale, Stapel sat in her dimly lit kitchen. She’s 82 years old now, and has lived in this home for 50 years. Stapel and her two siblings, Arba and Jack Wayne, grew up in a historic pioneer home just two miles away, with their parents Ardath and Jack Tripp. The missing library card belonged to her father when he was just 18 years old. She suspects he was checking out books for school — an endeavor he probably didn’t enjoy.
“My grandfather insisted that he have an education, and my dad hated it,” Stapel said. “He wasn’t much of a reader.”
According to Stapel, her father “bled oil”: All he wanted was to become a mechanic. During World War II, Tripp worked at a smelter in Midvale, then later became a mechanic for Greyhound, then Rocky Mountain Machinery Co. until his death from a heart clot in 1962. He was 51 when he passed away.
Tripp had two sons named Jack, from separate marriages. His son Jack Wayne Tripp — Lynne Stapel’s younger brother — passed away in 2012, and had five sons, all named Jack (but with different middle names). The Tripp family has been in the Salt Lake area for generations.
As Stapel relayed her father’s history, and her family’s penchant for the name Jack, she thumbed through old photos. Placing the pictures on her kitchen table, a fuller portrait of her father begins to emerge. There are photos of him in his early 20s, with a woman Stapel suspects is Tripp’s first wife, Georgia Brown. Then there’s Jack, holding a grinning Stapel when she was just a toddler. A shirtless, swimsuit clad Tripp is tilling a field in one photo. In another, taken in the early 1950s, he stands next to his son, both with identical cleft chins.
In her wallet, Stapel carries a small color photo of her father, taken not long before his death. In this last decade of his life, Tripp looks like he aged considerably. Perhaps decades of industrial work had taken its toll.
“He didn’t age well. He really didn’t,” Stapel remarked.
She remembers her dad’s dry sense of humor, and how defensive he was of Stapel’s mother.
“You’ve got to understand, he was raised in an age where you were seen and not heard, so they were not demonstrative at all to speak of,” she continued. “And I think back, and I don’t remember my mom and dad ever saying ‘I love you.’ I knew they did, but it just wasn’t done.”
Stapel and her siblings, she admitted, each remembered their father a bit differently. At this point, Stapel is the only one left to share those memories. Details about her dad’s personality are sparse — “That’s hard (to remember),” she said, “he’s been gone so long” — but she recalls his willingness to spend quality time with her and her siblings. He would often play ball with them and the neighborhood kids, or take them to get ice cream, or drive them to Beck’s Swimming Pool in northwest Salt Lake.
She said her dad was also a hard worker. On his body were scars from his smelting years, where he tapped the smelter’s lead furnaces. During a recession in the late 1930s, the smelter was going to lay off half of its employees, she recalled. Her father and other workers agreed to take a 50% pay cut so everyone could keep their jobs.
So no, the owner of the missing 90-year-old library card didn’t spend a lot of time at libraries. But by Stapel’s account, Jack Tripp did right by the people in his life, by being present, and being reliable.
“You know, he spent a lot of time with us,” she said. “We didn’t go on vacations and that kind of thing, because the money wasn’t there. But we spent a lot of time together.”
