Military meet-cute: Jill and Brian Ferguson

Photo: Jill Baker // Neighbors of the Wasatch Back.

“Summer Lovin’” is no longer reserved for Danny Zuko, Sandy Olsson, and their band of jazz-hand beatniks. Thanks to social media, finding former flames is as simple as a search and a “Hey, what’s up?” Which is exactly the same message Jill Ferguson sent to ex-husband Brian during the summer of 2016. This unassuming digital greeting, orchestrated by both firmware and fates, would lead to red-rock wedding bells as Jill and Brian re-tied the knot in Picacho State Park, 25 years after their first marriage.

Today, the Fergusons are full-time Park City residents living simply in their fifth-wheel RV, parked at Park City’s RV Resort (where else?), where they work as reigning managers and devoted “parents” to a 13-year-old Lab, often “out with Brian,” and a new addition, a mixed-breed rescue from Nuzzles & Co. 

But how they came together (twice, in fact) is at the heart of this military meet-cute. 

Love Life

Jill and Brian may live tiny, but in no way do they live small. Both veterans of the US Navy, they married when Brian was just 19 and Jill was 22, ages when distance often makes the heart grow…not fonder or more foul, just vaguely disinterested. “Back in the ’80s and early ’90s, if you were out to sea, there was no way to communicate,” says Jill. “During the three years we were married, I might have seen him for less than a year. So when we got back from the Gulf War, I just don’t think we knew each other anymore.” 

Their CDs and VHS tapes were evenly split, and Jill and Brian said their goodbyes. Or shall we say, “See ya laters.”

At this point in their story, the literary panhandler in me is deciding whether to bring out the pickaxe and mine for larger, serendipitous ore or continue to sift for the subtle, sand-sized nuggets Jill drops as she reveals, ever so cooly, that her marriage is something of a modern-day fairytale (my own interpretation). But from the simplicity of her tone, I sense she’s not one for the voodoo of metaphysical magic—just a good, old-fashioned believer of coincidence and a dash of southern destiny—so I quietly fill my rock bucket with both shock and awe as she shares the similarities in the paths both she and Brian would walk following their split, moments like graduating from the very same culinary school Brian would enroll in the following fall, missing each other by mere months. 

“We also both had Jack Russell Terriers, we both got sun tattoos, neither of us ever got remarried again or had kids,” Jill lists. “There were just so many similarities throughout the years that you just have to say, ‘Wow, that was kind of weird.’ It was like we were living parallel lives but never spoke.”

I imagine Jill and Brian’s story as the plot for a major rom-com, and I angle for some juicy, borderline nauseating confessions like, “The moment I saw him again, I knew he was still the one for me. We fell into each other’s arms and realized we were meant to be. I wore a flowered crown, he wore his old Navy uniform, and we were married barefoot on the beach, but Jill doesn’t satisfy my desire for Hollywood drama. Instead, she says nonchalantly, “By the end of the summer, we’d been back and forth between Virginia and Oregon, and finally, Brian suggested, ‘Let’s do this RV thing.’ So I sold my house, packed up my car, drove across the US (with my dog), and we’ve been doing it ever since.” 

Not quite a proposal, but not not a proposal. Either way, it’s been nine years since they both said “I do” again.

Family Life 

Oklahoma-born Jill, the youngest in a family of three sisters, joined the military on a whim, following a friend into what she calls “the best decision of my life. It got me out of Oklahoma and into the world. Going back, I can see how small life would have been otherwise.” And while, like most of her summations, Jill chalks much of her life up to spontaneous actions—“without much thought behind them”–duty, service, and discretion have always had a captain-sized seat at her familial table. “My father always told us he was a cook in the military,” Jill says, clearly holding her punchline, “but we found out at his funeral, as his service-member friends were sharing their memories of him, that was not the case. My father was actually a Hilo [sic] Gunner [helicopter gunner] mowing people down, and he didn’t want to talk about it with us kids, so he made up stories about what he did.”

Jill’s father’s condition following the Korean War would easily be classified as PTSD today, but that diagnosis was not available in the midcentury; instead, they used terms like “shellshock” or “combat fatigue” to describe (but not treat) what would eventually become an officially recognized disease in 1980, thirty years after soldiers returned home. “My father was not a healthy man following the war,” Jill remembers. “He was a heavy smoker, had a triple bypass in his forties, and died of cancer at 50. I’m 60 now, so I think about him dying, and it just hits me how young he was.” 

At this point in our conversation, I’m signing up for screenwriting classes and booking tour dates. With plots like these, who needs fiction? My mind is swirling with family deceit, the cost of war on those we love most, and a family’s shocking discovery as they learn their father was not the man they thought he was. I keep waiting for Jill’s smile to fade into pain, or for her tone to shift into something heavy as she remembers her dad, but she stays light, and I start to wonder whether Jill was born naturally calm or if she was made wise from a life lived on the road and at sea. Had the military trained her to manage her emotions? Or was she drawn to active duty because her nervous system was genetically capable of withstanding high stakes?

“I’m the black sheep of my family,” Jill admits. “I was the one who would always make big life changes and then tell my mom after it was decided. When I went into the Navy, I told her only after I was accepted.” 

Black sheep, white sheep, Jill is guided by rebellion and commitment, a combination never more evident than in her role as an aviation communications specialist responsible for handling classified flight information for military pilots. While she may not have been “mowing men down,” she was certainly circumnavigating the world of aviation and attack, just like Dad. Which reminds me of a phrase my own father used to say of our horses: “That one’s bombproof,” which meant that if the worst happened (like a car backfire or a snakebite on the trail), the horse—in this case, Jill—would be standing by, unfazed and unmoved. That’s not to say she isn’t capable of expressing emotion, but life on the road doesn’t allow for an overwhelming amount of baggage. 

Life on Wheels

The Park City RV Resort, as its tagline says, is “the only resort-style RV park within Park City limits,” but Brian and Jill just call it home. With seasonal and nightly guests, their hats are a-many, rotating among groundskeepers, tour guides, go-fers, and—as of late — project managers, as Roberts Resorts begins to upgrade its facilities.

My fascination with Jill’s lifestyle remains annoyingly piqued throughout our conversation, even as I try to shift to talking more about her life after the military–I’m consistently drawn back to her minimalist approach to living. But we do take a small detour, briefly touching on her time as a high school culinary teacher in the decade and a half before cell phones and Covid. We walk idly through her experience learning to mountain-bike at 51, including Brian’s “test” on the trails as they were reconnecting, ensuring she was up for the lifestyle. 

We also talk about her creative side, discussing her stuffed-animal crochet business, which she shares on Instagram (@pumpkin14.jf.) But despite all I’ve learned about this incredible member of our community, I’m still deeply curious why all of us stickbuilt people find mobility so enticing? If our society is so dead set on finding and owning the perfect home, why do RV and trailer videos rack up thousands, if not millions, of views, with van-life influencers nabbing more and more of the mental market share? “In the future, I might want to hitch it up and go somewhere else,” says Jill, simply. ”And I have the luxury of taking all my stuff with me. I’ve done the home-ownership thing, and I don’t feel like this RV is not home. It doesn’t feel like I’m in an RV. I have all the comforts of a house, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.” 

Her answer is the very reason I lust for a life unencumbered by the stability of standard living. The available spontaneity of a home entirely untethered feels innately biological, as if somewhere in my past a nomadic grandmother is whispering to me on a cool breeze, “Go. Go and find out.” It’s why I am beginning to find Jill and Brian’s story to be less and less of an untouchable fairytale, and more and more of a here’s-how-you-make-it-happen tutorial, for myself and anyone else who has ever wondered what it might be like to expand our horizons, reach out to an old friend, or live simply with what matters most.