The latest in our series…

The People of the Park

A Conversation with Marlene Juchniewicz

By Dale Dauten

“One of my jobs was managing the Children and Young Adult sections. We’d get these young boys who’d come moping in, and they sigh and say, ‘I have to read a book for school.’ And I’d talk to them about what they like, and we’d choose something and I’d tell them, ‘If you don’t like it, bring it back and we’ll find something else.’ But they didn’t bring the books back. Instead, they’d come in say, ‘What else have you got?’”

These days Marlene has a surprising technique for getting Resort residents to discover a new author or book category to fall in love with — let’s call the technique, “judging a book by its cover.” She says, “We put all the Fiction titles together, sorted by author. We don’t break out genres like Mystery or Romance. For one thing, it’s easier – you don’t have to figure out which sub-section a given book might be in – but I feel like it might get you to discover a genre you’ve never read. If you’re looking at titles by one author, you might see a book cover that catches your eye. I encourage people to pick up a book just because it looks interesting. That how I came into the world of Fantasy books – I liked a cover.”

We asked if Marlene remembered that book/cover and she replied, “I remember it was by Chloe Neill because that was the first fantasy author I read, but I can’t be sure now which one it was.” It did spark a recollection about the impact of fantasy titles on the world of publishing: “I was working at Barnes & Noble when the Harry Potter books came out. We would have midnight release parties. Everyone dressed up and the crowds were so big that the Fire Department came to click people in and out. I remember we’d have cases of books lined up behind the cashiers and we have one person just opening boxes and handing stacks of books to the cashiers.”

MARLENE: A BRIEF BIO

We always like to learn a little history of the people making a difference in the park, and we able to sit down with Marlene and ask about life before The Resort.

Like so many Resort residents, Marlene grew up on a family farm. In her case, it was alongside three brothers on a farm in Wisconsin. In thinking back on those days, her first memories were of the manual labor: harvesting corn, baling hay and harvesting tobacco. No wonder she married right out of high school and moved to Milwaukee. There she had two kids (now with eight grandkids and four great-grands) and went to work, first spending five years working for the makers of Simmons mattresses, and then ten years with insurance company Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

She left her job at Blue Cross because of company rules about conflicts of interest and her husband, Lee, was working for a client company, General Motors. But, not long after, the folks at Blue Cross found a way around their rules and rehired Marlene, this time in a consulting job, working with Chrysler. That eventually ended, when Chrysler decided to switch insurance companies, and Marlene happily entered retirement. “I was more than willing,” she explained, “because when you work with insurance you’re working with everyone’s personal issues and it’s a lot, mentally and physically.”

It was during that happy retirement that Marlene was strolling through a local mall and happened upon a career fair. Having never been to one, she decided to check it out. Turns out, a new Barnes & Noble was opening in the mall, and they drew Marlene into multiple conversations. “Within an hour,” she recalls, “I got a phone call, saying, ‘We’d like to offer you a job.’ I said I was only willing to work parttime and they said that was fine, but it didn’t take long for it to be fulltime.” She let it become fulltime because she enjoyed the work and the book people and 13 years went by.

But life happened and her husband passed away, the grandson she was helping raise graduated from high school, and her doctor told her that the only solution for her repeated bouts of pneumonia and bronchitis was to move, telling her, “Throw a dart at the Western part of the country, somewhere dry.” Given that she had once visited her mother while at a vacation rental at The Resort, Marlene decided to get a place at the park, then use it as a base while deciding where to buy a house. People of the park know what happened next: that old Resort magic. As Marlene put it simply: “I never left,” adding, “I’m glad I found this place and can be as busy as I want to be.”

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There’s a lot more detail on the functioning of The Resort’s library in our earlier article, available here:

https://theresortrvpark.com/april-2024-newsletter/