Coach Kiesling, retiring? No, not really
If you were to find ten young adults who grew up in Boca Grande during the 2000s and ask them who the most influential people in their lives were, you can be guaranteed a good number of them would say the name DJ, or “Coach,” Keisling. DJ has been working at the Boca Grande Community Center’s events and summer camp for a very long time … time he has made good use of. The number of young lives he has positively impacted is countless. Not to mention, it just wouldn’t be a proper egg hunt without him there between hunts, throwing candy to the wind with joyous abandon, surrounded by hundreds of young children who look as though they might eat him for brunch if he didn’t step up the pace.
Wednesday of this week was DJ’s last day working for Lee County Parks and Recreation, with the following Thursday being the starting date of his new position. What began in 1996 has ended, but that doesn’t mean that DJ won’t still be around. You may see him now more than ever.
DJ will be transitioning his career over to Friends of Boca Grande full-time, working in the new role of Business and Facilities Manager. He gave a bit of a giggle when he uttered the title, and admits he was impressed with it when Marta Howell, Director of Friends, told him what he would be called.
“There’s a lot of people who are amazed to find out I’ve been doing the books for Friends for a long time,” he said. “They can’t believe ‘Coach’ would know anything about accounting, but it was my first major in college – accounting and economics. I’m just not a suit-and-tie kind of guy.”
DJ and his family moved to Florida from Pittsburgh in the 1990s. After completing high school, he attended Edinburgh State College, now a state university hear Erie. It was there that he made the change in his major, one that would change his life’s work. He started working as a coach, teacher and mentor at several facilities, including one for at-risk youth. The other was a vocational school.
“I taught for seven years at the vocational school full-time, but the alternative school was where I worked in the evening,” he explained. “I worked at Allegheny County’s first “alternative” school. During the week at the Vo-Tech I was a P.E. teacher, I ran the in-school suspension program, and on Fridays I was a substitute teacher for just about everything. I taught auto tech, airline occupations, even cosmetology once or twice.”
As DJ and Janine’s family grew, he realized it was time to make a bit more money. His parents lived in Punta Gorda, so he started checking on jobs in Florida. In 1994 he found a job opening as a P.E. teacher at L.A. Ainger High School in Charlotte County, and they made the move down to the bottom of the map. He started right away and also began coaching at Lemon Bay High School in the afternoons, and that was when he started to meet not only the Englewood kids, but kids from Gasparilla Island as well.
“When I first came down here, Dave Chatham and Stuie Middleton were juniors in high school, playing football,” DJ said. “I started to realize that the kids from the island were some of the most well-mannered, well-behaved kids I had ever taught or coached.”
In 1995 DJ started working with Friends of Boca Grande, not only doing books but any other miscellaneous things they needed done. That led him to start working at Lee County Parks and Recreation.
“Most of the stuff I did, besides summer camp, was to assist with running the Halloween Carnival, the Egg Hunt, fishing tournaments, all of the events that Parks and Rec organized,” he said. “Over the years I’ve done a lot of them, which worked out this past season when, with very short notice, I had to order the supplies, find volunteers, buy candy and get everything ready. All the volunteers in the island stepped up, even more than I ever expected.”
What other jobs did DJ do for Parks and Recreation, other than to occasionally fling some candy or announce some costume contest winners? Just a few of his other responsibilities included mounds of paperwork, making trash runs to all the beach access points, cleaning the bathrooms, cleaning the offices, cleaning the fitness area, the multi-purpose room, fixing things that were broken and much more.
The 7 p.m. movies that used to be run at the Community Center? That was DJ. Closing the Lee County Reference Room at 9 p.m. when it was in the Community Center? That was DJ as well, and when sometimes people would come in as late as 11 or midnight (quite often guests of The Inn) in the early dawn of personal computers, to send an email or some other correspondence via the computer, he would let them in to do that.
Another well-loved and vital part of our Community Center’s history was Dee Wheeler. She created a large group of programs for the kids, some of which are still in effect today. She worked with DJ, as did Leslie Coleman, in the years after he first started there.
“Dee would wait for me to get here almost every evening,” he said. “Back then, the Community Center didn’t close until 7 p.m., and it was 9 p.m. before we would close the library. When I started with Parks and Rec, they wanted me for summer camp – at least the Friends group did – but Parks and Rec had already hired someone. So, I opened the game room every day and did other things for Friends. Things started expanding a bit when there were so many more people coming to the island, and Friends wanted the Center open on Saturdays as well … especially for the kids. We had two people Monday through Friday back then. Friends wanted the game room and weight room open for the kids on Saturday, and they pushed and said they would pay half of my check, then asked Parks and Rec to chip in as well. When the multi-purpose room opened it was a logical decision to open the Community Center on Saturdays. I worked here on that day as well, every week.
Years later it has come full circle, as the County has decided not to keep the Center open on Saturdays (see page 1 story).
A few years later DJ found “Boca” Bob Greene and brought him on board, followed by “Jungle” Joe Wier. The Three Musketeers of the Community Center worked together as a powerful force for good for many years, but within the last few years things have changed. Bob and Joe are no longer here (though Joe still works on island), but after all these years it is not surprising to find DJ up and about in Boca Grande emptying beach access garbage or cleaning the Center’s restrooms.
Years of experience are no match for overflowing garbage. Seniority of position doesn’t exist to a dirty bathroom. Not to mention the fact that DJ can’t stand idle time.
“Parks and Recreation is not a 9 to 5 job,” he said, profoundly.
This summer’s camp was not an easy one to end his career with, he admits. They were short-staffed by two, which left everyone scrambling to accommodate as many campers as they could while maintaining the state’s counselor/camper ratio. DJ wanted the most out of his last year, and he lucked out in several ways – finding Stephanie Stillwagon to be a group leader; having a great support staff of rangers and Parks administrators who filled in whenever they could; having Boca Grande Art Center artist Deborah Dawn Cooper teach the kids art; and having a college student named Hannah to teach the kids drama. Hannah is studying elementary education and drama in college in the Northeast, and while she was here with her parents this summer, she took advantage of the vacation and made a little money at the same time.
“We really lucked out finding her,” DJ said. “Christine’s (Head of School for TIS) husband Ryan ran the North Port Performing Arts Center,” DJ said. “He used to do drama with kids here at the Boca Grande Summer Camp in the 1990s and 2000s. I wanted this year to give the kids a good, solid drama program, and we had it.
“Hopefully they can continue this. A lot of the kids really loved it.”
After 36 years of coaching and teaching, DJ is ready to “wind down” with a job at Friends, with people who have become good friends to him. He’ll still be around … just in a different capacity. He’ll still be working those Halloween and Easter events and is hoping to have some Boca Bunch activity in the future, so stay tuned for more updates on that.
“My last day at L.A. Ainger, it was hard,” DJ said. “Same with the last day of summer camp. Friends has been asking me for years to be full-time for them, but I wasn’t ready. I was enjoying what I was doing. Things happened that made me realize that I was ready for a change, and I wanted to spend more time with my beautiful wife. I was ready for Friends. I told them and they really rolled out the red carpet for me.”
