January 2023 Newsletter

January 1, 2023    News   

The latest in our series,

THE PEOPLE OF THE PARK…

A Visit with Joy & Kevin Reski

by Dale Dauten
It was the nearing the end of 2017, Christmas time, and Joy Reski was missing her home. She and her husband, Kevin, had come to visit Silveridge from Fargo and, as she explained, “After ten days, I was ready to go home. I felt like I should be there putting up the tree and doing Christmas decorations.” Instead, they were in a rental, with none of their usual holiday ornamentations. What to do? Joy decided to go to the office and volunteer to help decorate at the park. And that saved her Christmas spirit… and she’s been passing along high spirits ever since: indeed, two years later, when Yvonne Rowley was ready to pass the torch, Joy took over the leadership of the team of volunteer decorators.

 

As Activities Director Lu Way put it, “Joy is our lead decorator for all functions. She has a great team of elves that sweep in and decorate the ballroom and just as quickly, clear it off and put it away.”

 

(Photos: That’s Joy in the storage area, surrounded by decorations, and below that, the latest team photo.)

Back Row L to R: Dorothy Radi, Judy Schnaible, Barb Kor

Middle row: Beth Lockhart, Amy Foy, Penny Dates, Linda Elliot

Seated: JoAnn Kloos, Barbie Jurgens, Ingrid Zacharias, Joy Reski, Glenda Littlefield

Missing: Sue Bidinger, Leona Hauge, Paula Voight, Linda Huss
THE RESKIS

One of the places you’ll see the work of the decorating elves is at the Silveridge dances. And that’s also where you’re likely to find the Reskis, out on the dance floor. It’s where they first met — on a dance floor at the West Fargo VFW, both attending a mutual friend’s birthday party. Kevin recalls being impressed by Joy and thinking, “I’d like to spin with her more often.” They dated. They married. They created a blended family, each bringing a son and daughter to the marriage. And they kept on dancing.

 

The couple became regulars at dance events around town and started entering competitions, eventually becoming regular winners. That ended one evening when they went to register at an Elks Club competition. Kevin explained: “We went to register and the man running the event pulled us aside and said, ‘Would you mind going outside and sitting in your car till the other couples have registered? If they see you two are entering, some of the others will drop out.” That day, as Kevin put it, “We realized we were ruining the competition for others. That was the end of our trophy seeking.”

 

(Photo: Joy and Kevin at a recent Silveridge dance)
When they weren’t dancing or raising four kids, the Reskis had full careers.

 

Joy graduated from North Dakota State University where she studied languages, focusing on Latin, and found she had a gift. She already spoke German, having picked it up from her grandparents, and eventually added Spanish and French. And so she was a natural to teach languages, spending most of her career teaching junior high.

 

Meanwhile, Kevin grew up in Moorhead, Minnesota and eventually studied engineering at Moorhead State. He also grew up in the family business, saying, “There were nine of us kids – free labor to Dad.” That business was making and installing communication towers. Of the nine kids, only one decided to stay in the business – that was Kevin, who became CEO and helped move the company to West Fargo and its new name, Great Plains Towers, Inc. Their towers are all over the world, even Antarctica.
And while Kevin’s siblings had left the company, Joy got involved: she’d head out on the road with him over her summer breaks from teaching. One of their corporate experiences included lie detector tests to be given Federal Top Secret security clearance. That’s because Kevin had designed special tilting towers to be used by U.S. embassies. “It started after the Benghazi attack,” Kevin said. (That was in Libya in 2012.) “The government wanted to mount cameras that could reach out and look down outside the embassy walls, but could be retracted. I designed a hinged tower and got a patent for it.” Those towers are now being used in embassies around the world.

 

COMING TO SILVERIDGE

The Silveridge connection is also a family affair: Kevin’s parents had a place in the park and that’s how the couple came to first rent a place back in 2017, when Joy made that decision to become a volunteer decorator. They soon became regulars, splitting their time between Mesa and Fargo.

When at Silveridge they keep busy. Joy not only leads the decorators, but teaches one of the water aerobics classes, and she does tai chi. And Kevin, when not running the tower company, does water volleyball, desert ATV riding, and karaoke. And, of course, you’ll find them at the park’s dances.