Long-time Journal readers may remember advertising artist Reese’s full-page advertisements in the Sunday edition of The Daily Journal she helped create featuring Don Dannheim of Dannheim Dairy.

Her colorful ads for Domeier’s German Store on Minnesota Street South in New Ulm were among her favorites.

Reese’s newspaper advertising artwork helped her win a Minnesota Newspaper Association Best Advertising Campaign Award in 1985.

Reese loves nature and loves painting it with a variety of mediums. Her home is full of her art work.

Joyce Reese enjoyed dancing including ballet.

“I still enjoy painting. It’s relaxing and a way to be creative,” she said.

Graduating from Comfrey High School in 1950, she attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, a private, creative school that offers a major in comic art plus courses in fine arts, design, entrepreneurship and sustainability.

“I learned a lot about artists plus everything else you can learn in school,” she said.

Her family history includes interacting with Jesse James, an American outlaw, bank and train robber and leader of the James-Younger Gang considered by some individuals as the most notorious outlaw that ever lived.

“Grandma said they (James-Younger Gang) were kind to her family and that she made sandwiches for them when her family lived in a dugout near Darfur,” said Reese.

Flowers are among Joyce Reese’s favorite painting subjects.

“I often visited Grandma Peterson in St. James. She had a player piano in which she placed paper rolls punched with holes that went around and around, playing songs as she pumped the pedals. She taught me hymns and we would sing. She also made rainbow cakes, white sheet cakes with coloring swirled throughout, for me.” Reese said.

She said her grandmother’s yard looked like a garden and zoo with life size animals, tall birth baths and two ponds with golfdish.

Reese recalled the 1940 Armistice Day snowstorm.

“It was nice out in the morning so I walked to school. No one was there, so I turned around, went home and soon snow began to fall. There were huge drifts when the snowstorm ended. I went outside to play in it. It was a good thing I had a little shovel along because I sunk into a drift and had to shovel my way out,” she said.

Reese said she began designing and making her own clothes since she was in seventh grade.

A drawing of First Lutheran Church of Lafayette is also a favorite piece of artwork.

“I met Keith (Reese) of Gibbon at a dance. We talked when he wasn’t playing music,” she said.

“I had an interesting childhood. I’ve had a wonderful life all the way through,” said Joyce Reese.

Keith Reese began his professional music career at age 15, playing with the Clem Rhode Band and Eddie Wilfahrt’s German-American polka band of New Ulm.

Reese later played with the Six Fat Dutchmen, Sammy Jensen, Guy DeLeo, Tiny Little, Babe Wagner, Wally Pikal, Carl and the Country Dutchmen. He formed The Flames band that later became the Keith Reese Trio.

Serving in the U.S. Army for five years, he played piano in the Army Officer’s Club in Fort Sill, OK. Reese received an Army Commendation Medal for outstanding marksmanship.

Reese created a Jazz concert bill in 1952.

Keith Reese died of terminal cancer in 2002.

“I loved my husband. I never remarried because he was such an exceptional musician. He played the trumpet, valve trombone, fluegelhorn, and piano ” she said.

Keith Reese was inducted into the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in 2010.

“An accomplished musician, he had perfect pitch and wrote and arranged music for orchestra and smaller groups. He played a variety of jazz, classical, pop, country rock and polka for nearly 60 years with many bands across Europe and the United States including the Disney World Band in Florida.

Famed pianist Ramsey Lewis urged Reese to move to New York to work with him but Reese preferred living and raising a family in a small town.