May 2025 Newsletter

May 1, 2025    News   

The latest in our series…

People of the Park:

Denny & Breta Jackson (Part 2)

By Dale Dauten
Stepping into Denny and Breta Jackson’s front room at The Resort is like walking into one of the shops in Scottsdale’s Old Town – your eyes get pulled in every direction by the variety of the art on display. But it isn’t art purchased over the years; no, it’s nearly all Jackson originals.
And the good news is that Denny is sharing his artistic knowledge, offering classes at The Resort, including over the summer. More on that in a minute, but let’s start with a photo tour….
Above, a view of one wall of the front room, and below is a closeup of one of the paintings in that photo, a portrait of Fran Curtis, a man who was a Navy SEAL for 20 years then spent another 20 years in the Army Special Forces. Denny describes him as “An awesome painter who inspired me to paint again.”
And below is Denny’s workspace, featuring another portrait, this one of “Wild Bill,” a friend from another of Denny’s hobbies, fast draw competitions.
“HOW CAN I USE IT?”

It isn’t just painting that stirs Denny’s creativity: in the photos that follow…

the painting of a Native American woman is on a piece of palm bark, then there’s Denny with a thumb harp made from a gourd, playing a pipe made from a aspen branch, and an antler alongside some of his other carvings. Denny said of this inventiveness, “I see things and I think, ‘How can I can use it?’”
And it isn’t just Denny whose work fills the house – although Breta has retired from her artistic endeavors, there are plenty of examples of her specialty: gourd art. One of her specialties within a specialty is putting a dream-catcher into the gourd. A couple of examples…
WATCH FOR CLASS SCHEDULES

As for classes at The Resort, Denny will partner with Denny Neubauer for Beginning Woodcarving, coming in the fall. However, over the summer, Denny will be one of several teachers who’ll do a weekly class featuring a variety of artistic styles. (Details will be announced soon.) One of the classes Denny enjoys teaching is sponge painting, which is just what it sounds like and can produce something like the carnations featured in an earlier class…
“PART 2”?

Particularly alert readers may be wondering about the title of this article including “Part 2.” That’s because we wrote about the Jacksons back in 2021. At that time they were still splitting their time between Mesa and Omaha, Nebraska. But, not long after that article, they decided they had enough of the long drive and wanted a drier climate, so they decided to sell the house they’d owned for 51 years and move fulltime to The Resort.

 

Here is that earlier article, edited for length.

 

 

DENNY & BRETA JACKSON (2021)

 

What do professional bowling, gourds, a crime lab and Old West fast draw have in common? We got to hear about them all, and much more, talking with Resort residents Denny and Breta Jackson.
FINDING THE RESORT

It was gourds that played a role in the Jacksons discovering The Resort. It turns out that Arizona is a hotbed of gourd art. Every year (at least when there’s not a pandemic) over ten thousand people descend on Casa Grande for the Running of the Gourds, with over a hundred artist and vendor booths, live music and classes, all in addition to the actual “running,” which turns out to be a race of “gourdsters,” miniature cars made of gourds.

 

Back in 2014, friends of the Jacksons, knowing that Breta was a gourd artist, persuaded them that they needed to come out from Omaha to visit Arizona. The Jacksons called around and found a month-long rental at The Resort.

 

You know what happened next: They came to The Resort for a month. The next year they came back for a two months… and they ended up buying a place.

 

Not only have they been back every winter, they’re now contemplating becoming year-rounders. As Denny say, “I didn’t know if I’d like the desert, but I fell in love. It has its own beauty.” And Breta added, “There are great people at The Resort – we’ve met special friends there.”

 

“JOINED AT THE HIP”

But let’s back up. Both Denny and Breta are originally from Iowa and that’s where they met. Denny recalled that first meeting: “ I was going to college at Northern Iowa and like a lot of people in college, we used to drink a little beer. Every Tuesday my roommates and I had a party. During one of those parties, Breta walked in with the fullback of the football team. I thought to myself, ‘Oh. My. God.’ And I spent the next week hoping she’d come back to the next party, and he wouldn’t.” That’s just what happened. As Breta put it, “We’ve been joined at the hip ever since.”

 

Denny went on to get a degree in Education and taught school for five years while Breta worked for an insurance agency before the pair had three children. They decided they didn’t want to scrape by on a teacher’s salary, so when Denny’s dad decided to retire and sell his bowling pro shop, Denny and Breta bought it. For the next twenty years they worked together, wholesaling and retailing bowling equipment. They did a lot of bowling along the way — so much so that Denny joined the Senior Pro Bowling Tour and competed around the country. (The highlight of his time on tour was setting a PBA record: a 249 average on a ten-game block. He was also inducted into Nebraska’s Bowling Hall of Fame and both Denny and Breta are in Omaha’s Bowling Hall of Fame.)

 

(The photo below was taken in their business, Midwest Bowling & Billiard Supply.)
Eventually, though, they decided to sell the business and start new careers. Breta went to work for U.S. Bank, ending up in the trust department where her work included the pleasant job of informing beneficiaries what they were about to inherit. Meanwhile, Denny took on a very different role: he went to work at a Crime Lab, becoming one of three people responsible for evidence for all crimes committed in Omaha. “The work was interesting but demanding,” Denny said. “It was eight hours of intense concentration.”

 

That ended in 2008, when Denny retired, and eventually Breta joined him, retiring from the bank the following year.

 

A BUSY RETIREMENT

The couple did not lack for things to do in retirement. For one thing, Denny got to spend more time with his woodcarving. He became President of the largest wood carving club in the country and was a regular at an annual convention held at Doane College. Meanwhile, Breta developed her love of gourd art and the two of them travelled the country, giving classes.

 
Then, as if Denny didn’t have enough to work on, he fell into participating in Cowboy Fast Draw competitions. He explained: “We dress in 1870’s cowboy garb and use single-action .45 revolvers with wax bullets. The shoot-outs are with targets that are 15 feet away. There’s a light in the middle of the target that flashes and the competition is to see who’s fastest on five draws. You have to hit the target – it’s 17 inches – three out of five draws. The draws take less than half a second.”
BEST ADVICE

Doing Fast Draw undoubtedly takes fast reflexes and a clear mind, so it made sense when Denny told us he got a lot of advice from his mom, but none more useful than that old bit of wisdom, “Never let ‘em see you sweat.” Denny recalled how that advice was helpful in his professional bowling days: “When I’d see one of my competitors getting upset, maybe getting angry and kicking the rack of balls, that ‘never let ‘em see you sweat’ would come back to me and I knew I had them, that they’d be making mistakes.”