Wheaton Mayor Mike Gresk feels 'a need to serve'

As then-Wheaton Park District candidate Mike Gresk and his wife, Kathleen, traveled through town during his campaign in 1989, they saw something that struck them as very bizarre.

During previous runs for office, the majority of his campaign signs were placed in lawns of friends or friends of friends.

But in this race, things were a little different.

“There were times when we saw signs up, we knew every person who had the sign up,” Gresk said. “But we looked at each other and we said, ‘We don't know that person and he has my sign in the yard? Is that great or what?'”

About 22 years later, Gresk had signs in just about every corner of Wheaton and the political campaigning thing seems to have become old hat. On April 5, Gresk, 61, was re-elected for a second term as Wheaton mayor after a hard-fought election against a city councilman who spotlighted the differences between the candidates' leadership styles.

For Gresk, it's a consensus-building leadership style developed during more than three decades of community involvement and public office.

The seed of politics was planted for Gresk at St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Ind., where he served as class president during his junior and senior years.

But the results of his first campaign for elected office did not exactly foreshadow a position as Wheaton's top elected official.

As a Carol Stream resident in the early 1970s, he made a halfhearted bid to serve on the Carol Stream Park District board by “canvassing” his cul-de-sac.

Apparently, his opponent lived in a larger neighborhood and Gresk's first run for office — as a write-in candidate — went down to defeat, 8 votes to 5. But in 1978, he made his first successful run and served 3½ years on the Carol Stream Park District board.

“It is a bug, you get bitten by it,” he said of running for public office. “It's infectious, in a good way. I have been fortunate enough to have support of the voters and to have gotten elected.”

After he and Kathleen moved to Wheaton in 1983, he took several years off from public office and volunteered for several organizations, including Cub Scouts and the city's Sesquicentennial Commission in 1987 and 1988.

More recently, he served on the committee that raised money for the rebuilding of St. Michael Catholic Church, which was reopened in 2006, exactly four years after a fire set by a Wheaton resident destroyed the building.

Gresk returned as a Wheaton Park District board member in 1989 and said public office at the local level has more to do with public service than higher levels of government.

“It's just a true feeling of a need to serve,” he said. “I get a great degree of satisfaction of being a soccer coach, being on the church council and being on the city council.”

“I don't think there is a partisan way to plow the streets or repair sidewalks,” he said. “At this level, it truly is done as a service to the community. I enjoy the fact that it is not partisan.”

After one term in office at the park district, then-Mayor Jim Carr appointed Gresk to a seat on the city's History Commission. Gresk is a history buff and has taught a community college course on history and world cultures, as well as fifth- through eighth-grade social studies in London.

It was on the commission that Gresk started making inroads into the city council and in 1995, he was elected to his first of two terms on the council.

When City Councilman John Prendiville challenged Gresk during the past campaign, which Gresk won while receiving 57 percent of the 8,025 votes, he brought into question Gresk's leadership style. Prendiville said a mayor should take a position on an issue first, then build support. Gresk, however, stuck with his style that he said builds consensus before coming to a decision.

“We all need to appreciate the value of cooperation and of pulling on the rope in the same direction,” he said.

Despite all of the challenges he has faced as a public figure, Gresk said he wouldn't trade it for anything.

“I thoroughly enjoy elected office,” he said. “I enjoy the ability to have a certain impact on the way a community develops. I firmly believe you are supposed to transmit a city to the next generation better than it was transmitted to you.”