The Sunshine Gang: Finding Brotherhood at Park Place

There's a spot near the front door of Park Place where the sun pools on the floor in the morning. In the winter, four men claimed it as their own. When the weather turned warm, they moved outside. Either way, they have never stopped talking.

Dale Bala, Jim Reiser, Don Saxsma, and Burt VanProyen make up what they call, without a trace of irony, the Sunshine Gang. All four met at the dinner table at Park Place — but a few of them arrived already knowing each other. 

Dale Bala spent 35 years teaching middle school, guiding sixth, seventh, and eighth graders through every subject. On his very first day at Park Place, as his sister was walking out the door to fetch his belongings, Jim asked her what Dale's name was and stopped cold.

"I know that name," Jim said.

What followed was a slow unraveling of coincidence that still makes the two men shake their heads. Jim had lived in the same school district where Dale taught. Dale's wife's cousin had a cottage in Michigan — directly across the street from Jim's place — and neither family had ever known it. And the school secretary at Jim's workplace, it turned out, was the mother of Dale's son-in-law.

"Six degrees of separation?" Dale said with a laugh. 

The connections between Don and Burt run just as deep. Don had bought furniture from Burt's family business for years. And somewhere along the line, Don's son married Burt's niece. They've been quietly embedded in each other's lives for years without ever quite realizing the full picture.

The four men bring a combined century and a half of work and stories to their morning sun spot.

Jim spent his career as a production control manager for an aerospace company, overseeing shop floor schedules, shipping and receiving, outside processes, purchasing, and a tool crib, with roughly 40 people under his charge at the peak. He was married for 43 years. His wife passed away in 2016. He has two daughters — one in Tennessee, one in the Highland area. He was also an avid golfer. He attended the Masters Tournament four times.

"He never won, though," Dale adds, deadpan.

Don Saxsma built homes and buildings for 45 years, the trade of a man who grew up on a farm in southern Illinois and understood what it meant to make something with his hands. He met his wife in Chicago under circumstances that seem almost too good to be true: he and his friends came up for an auto show, but his friends — good churchgoing men — refused to attend on a Sunday. They went to services instead, and his friend promised to get him a date to make up for the show. The woman who showed up became his wife. They had three children.

Don was the tenth of twelve children and attended a one-room country schoolhouse that held all eight grades under one roof. Some years, he was the only student in his class — a fact he recalls with great satisfaction. "I was generally the smartest one in my class," he says, grinning, "because I was the only one."

Bert spent decades in the furniture business, working alongside his father and four brothers. The family built something that extended beyond commerce; they were known in Highland for their generosity to the community, giving back to the town they called home.

Dale taught nearly every subject middle school had to offer, helping coach basketball on the side, though he draws a hard line at language arts. His one year teaching it, he says, was "awful." He has lived with macular degeneration for some time now and is legally blind, though you would scarcely know it from a conversation with him. He reads faces by clothing and color, recognizes voices and mannerisms, and navigates the world with a matter-of-fact grace that is quietly remarkable. "I'm so used to it," he says simply.

Ask the men what they love about Park Place, and you get answers that say more about who they are than about the place itself.

Don lights up talking about bingo — not the in-house version, but the big games at what he calls "the big house," where real money changes hands, and the competition is serious. Jim, characteristically understated, says his favorite part is that he is still alive. Burt, after a long pause, suggests the food is great but could be improved — specifically, he would like lobster — and the others dissolve into laughter.

Dale's talks about the doorway, the common areas, and the ability to simply be somewhere other than a room. "I've known some places they call assisted living that are like prisons," he says. "All you can do is stay in your room." Here, people walk by and stop to talk. His great-grandson comes and plays. Family visits. Life continues.

The group has a Father's Day barbecue to look forward to —on the grill out back next Thursday — and the sun is warm, and they have things to say to each other. In the end, that seems to be the whole of it.

They showed up at the same door, in the same season, at roughly the same point in their lives, and found people who knew the same streets, the same school districts, the same Michigan lake. They sit in the sun and let the time pass. It is, as one of them puts it, "something that you can do."

Not a small thing. Not a small thing at all.