It's a memory that still causes Joniak to choke up.
"I remember calling my buddy Jim Joyce, otherwise known as 'Doc,'" Joniak recalled, "and I said, 'you're never going to believe what I'm gonna do today. I'm gonna go to Hersey,' where the first day of school, I was in that gym in square dance class. My first period was gym class. Now I'm going to go in that gym and I'm going to tell that kid that was 14 years old — if somebody would have said, 'hey, you're going to try to get the Bears their first privately owned stadium in their now 106-year history, you would have laughed at me.'
"I walked in there and that gym smelled the same. And everything looked familiar and I could not believe what I was doing — helping the Bears and the McCaskey family try to get a stadium."
Joniak was first introduced to those 326 acres by his father, who loved the ponies. He called it a "big, big event" whenever his high school self had the opportunity to spend a day at the racetrack. He remembers going to the park with his family to watch fireworks.
As the Bears now zero in on Arlington Heights as the future home of their world-class stadium, Joniak can envision how impactful the project would be for the community, Bears fans and Chicagoland.
"It can mean great things for this franchise moving forward — for the Bears, the fans, the NFL, Chicagoland, the county and the state," Joniak said. "What is going to be eventually built there beyond just the stadium is really impactful and they deserve to have that kind of stadium. The fans deserve to have that kind of stadium, that kind of facility. The train drop off there, to me, is unlike any other stadium anywhere in the in the world. I don't know, maybe there is in Europe, I don't know. And to have a Super Bowl eventually and all these other major events, it kind of moves my soul."
Joniak's father is responsible for way more than just his son's fondness for Arlington Park.
He instilled a love for sports in his son at a young age, specifically football, by taking him to sporting events as simple as high school football games — where Joniak can still recall the first time he felt the emotions of the fans and realized he shared their passion.