Sun N Fun Blog: RV Resort, Vacation Homes, Vacation Home Rentals in Sarasota, Florida

For most of us, lifting a grandchild into our arms for hugs and kisses is no big thing. But it just wasn’t possible for Linda Rezendez because a number of health issues and near constant pain were sapping her energy and her spirit. But it hadn’t always been like that.

Soon after retirement, – Linda had her own hair salon and husband Joe was the Deputy Fire Chief of Nantucket, MA, where they still have a home. The couple began RVing. They spent their first couple of winters in Key West, FL, but decided that life there just wasn’t for them. A number of RV friends had told them that they couldn’t go to Florida without stopping at Sun-N-Fun. They decided to take the advice, intending to stay for three days. They ended up staying for three weeks. That was nine years ago.

“I fell in love with the place at first sight,” Linda tells us. “We came back the next year for the entire season and the year after that bought a park model vacation home. Now we’re at the Resort from the end of October through April.”

When they first came to Sun-N-Fun, Linda was able to take part in water aerobics, her favorite fitness activity; she enjoyed making clothes (she’s an expert seamstress); and she loved crafting. But her health issues were making it increasingly difficult, then eventually impossible, to participate.

Until recently. Now, thanks to a new breakthrough medication and the work she and Joe do with trainer Sheri Clarry at our state-of-the-art Indoor Pool and Wellness Center, Linda is back, living the life she and Joe had dreamed of when they first came to Sun-N-Fun nine years ago.

The couple met Sheri at a lecture she gave about the Wellness Center several months before it opened. They were so impressed they decided to start working with her privately at the old gym, all the while waiting patiently for the new Wellness Center to open. When it did this past January, they began working out in earnest, taking advantage of all it offered.

“I’m doing high intensity training with Linda and Joe,” Sheri explains. “The Indoor Pool and Wellness Center offers a terrific well-rounded approach to cross-training. And cross training is the key to longevity.”

“Sheri is a great motivator,” Joe says. “She explains what muscle groups we’re working and pushes us to do our best. I can’t say enough positive things about her. She and the Center have made a huge difference to the quality of our lives.”

Now the Rezendes work out three times a week at the Center, once a week with Sheri and twice a week on their own, working on the strength training machines. They also do a Tai Chi class at the Center twice a week.

They both started seeing changes almost immediately. “I’m able to run three miles now. I’ve never had more energy,” the retired Deputy Fire Chief of Nantucket says. He attributes the changes to the Wellness Center.

“We had free weights at the fire house, but we didn’t really know what we were doing. The Wellness Center has everything: free weights, machines, aerobics and classes. You really learn how to keep in shape. And the environment is so bright and clean you want to work out. We’re very fortunate to have something of this caliber so close.”

Linda’s pleased with the changes she sees in Joe. “He has more energy. He’s building himself up and I’m seeing more muscles in his legs and biceps. I like that!”

As for Linda, the Indoor Pool and Wellness Center, coupled with the benefits of her medication and working with Sheri, have made for some significant changes.

“We started doing private sessions with Sheri in November. By December, when the grandchildren came for a visit with our daughter, she was a different woman, picking up the kids and playing with them,” Joe says of his wife.

“Now I’m participating in life again instead of just watching,” she says joyfully.

We know a couple of grandchildren who are happy about that.

Ivan Gladish is a very romantic fellow. When it came time in 2010 to propose to his lady love, the appropriately named Priti, he took her to a wonderful Italian restaurant on Valentine’s Day, got down on one knee, offered her a red rose and ring, and asked for her hand in marriage. Happily for both, she accepted.

Exactly one year later, on Valentine’s Day 2011, on an unseasonably cold Siesta Key beach at sunset, Ivan and Priti became man and wife. The bride wore a sari while the groom sported white trousers and shirt, set off by a leather necklace with wooden beads he had made for himself and his best man. The couple was surrounded by about sixty friends from Sun-N-Fun, all bundled in hoodies and jackets, supplying what warmth there was, in a ceremony officiated by Sun-N-Fun General Manager, Tim Deputy, who among his many talents has the authority to perform weddings.

After many pictures, guitar music from Priti’s dance teacher, and a champagne toast on the beach – “My hands were shaking, but with the cold,” Ivan explains – they returned to Sun-N-Fun and a grand party thrown by their friends in the Pavilion.

“When we started to let people know we were getting married, a committee of ladies – Carol Williston, Rita Edmondson, Ann Marie Rose, Sharon Rigby, Nancy Gillis, Penny Emmett and Dora Carvalho – took on the responsibility for overseeing various aspects of the wedding and party and all helped to make it an event as lovely, fun and unforgettable as my wife,” Ivan says, still obviously in awe at his good fortune in his choice of a bride and the kindness and thoughtfulness of their friends.

The wedding was a long time coming and the story behind it is as romantic in its way as the wedding.

Ivan was a fireman in Nottingham, England where his best mate was a fellow named Dave. After working together for nearly twenty years, Dave brought around a beautiful woman he would soon marry. That woman was Priti. Not too many months later, Ivan married as well. The two couples were great friends, vacationing together when they could in France. Eventually Ivan retired and bought a sailboat where he lived with his wife on the Spanish Mediterranean.

In 1998, Ivan and his wife came to the states. He was looking for a car and an RV they could rent and use to tour. That brought him to Sun-N-Fun and he decided to make the Resort his base. Over the next few years they traveled to every state in the Union, save Hawaii, Alaska and North Dakota. When the touring was done Ivan, who had fallen in love with Florida’s West Coast and Sun-N-Fun, decided to purchase a vacation home here. Not long after, he and his wife divorced.

When friend Dave finally retired from the fire brigade, he and Priti moved to Spain, where they bought a home. But when Dave took ill and passed away, Ivan went to Spain to help Priti get over the loss. In time, the deep feelings that the two had shared for so many years as close friends turned to love and they decided to spend the rest of their lives together.

And so, for the last four years they have been splitting their time between Sun-N-Fun and Spain, where Priti, who speaks English, French, Spanish, Catalan, German and Punjavi, works part time in the travel business. Here, she spends her time preparing for the yearly talent show, rehearsing her dance routines four or five days a week. Ivan stays fit swimming, working in the workshop, and playing Petanque.

Priti and Ivan’s marriage truly is a happily ever after story, and the joy in their voices when they speak of one another proves once again that love can be sweet the second time around.