This article was originally published in the Fall 2018 edition of Cardinal & Cream’s print magazine.
Scott Jeffrey walked up to the Bowld desk one evening to find a disappointed Sabrina Clendenin, who was attempting to repair a broken coffee pot. Scott asked if he could bring it back home with him that night to take a look at it. When he realized that the price of the replacement part would be more than a new coffee pot, he bought Sabrina and the other RAs a brand new, bright red Mr. Coffee maker.
Scott retired from police work in Michigan after 28 years of service. His wife Laurie had been working part-time at Western Theological Seminary, and they became ready for a change. Their daughter Natalie was married, and their son Matt was in the Marine Corps at that time, living in South Carolina with his wife. Their original plan to move homes turned into a six-month-long “journey across America.”
“Literally on the day we closed [our] house, we had our stuff all put in storage, had the back of our Volkswagen Station Wagon packed full of camping gear with no direction to go and no planning,” Scott said. “We headed down to Middlebury, Indiana, just because there was a place we loved there in Amish country. We figured we’d start out there.”
After staying a night in Middlebury, they headed West. They spent some time in Seattle with Scott’s family, toured the Winchester Mystery House and Wine Country in California, met with Scott’s nephew in San Diego, stayed in a friend’s house for a few nights in Las Vegas, saw the legendary Field of Dreams from the 1989 film featuring Kevin Costner, visited their daughter in law in South Carolina, stopped to eat lunch at a 50s diner and explore a major archeological dig on the open prairie of South Dakota, went tent camping at Yellowstone, and much more.
They were often asked by bewildered acquaintances how they could put up with each other for so long in one vehicle, in less-than-comfortable circumstances. But this wasn’t their first time.
Scott and Laurie met in the Navy. She was a nurse. He was on an aircraft carrier. Their paths crossed for a short period of time when they were both training in Bremerton, Washington. The first time Scott saw Laurie, he was throwing a frisbee down a hallway with a friend, and she happened to walk down that same hallway carrying a load of laundry.
“We saw each other every day,” Laurie said.
“I even snuck off the ship. We were doing a practice general quarters drill where nobody could leave the ship. But the bottom of the ship had a hole cut in the engine room where I worked, so I went out through the bottom of the ship, up the ship yard, to the dry dock that we were in. Then I snuck in the hospital through the fire escape to the ward where she was working. The other nurses knew that I was there. They didn’t care. We’d just hang out and talk.”
Three weeks later, he asked her to marry him, knowing that if she didn’t their paths may never cross again, since she was being stationed in Japan. As newlyweds, living in a city among people who didn’t speak their language and at a time when long distance calls to family and friends back home cost $45 a minute, they were forced to communicate with each other, work out their differences, and figure out what it would take to live together happily.
These life lessons from the beginning of their marriage were helpful during long rides together and camping in the middle of wide-open plains with no one else nearby.
“How would you like to wake up with about 20-30 buffalo standing outside your tent?” Scott asked. “They could walk right through it and crush you in a heartbeat.”
During their time at Yellowstone, they met a couple from the Jackson area who spoke highly of the area. While they didn’t think a lot about it at the time, their travels would eventually lead them there, where they would buy and renovate a log cabin on a beautiful three-acre property with a pond. They would come walk the grounds of a beautiful campus called Union University, where Scott would eventually accept a job offer for Safety and Security.
“As we traveled, we looked for homes along the way,” Scott said. “Do we want to live in Oregon, California, Nevada, Florida? We just didn’t know, but we believed God would lead us wherever we ended up.”
They both agree that through every stage of their journey, and even through every stage of their lives, God has been directing the path and orchestrating all the details in just the right way. They said that the most wonderful moments of their lives “shouldn’t have happened.” It was obvious to them that someone else was writing their story.
Laurie found a log cabin in Medina on three acres. They fell in love with the place, and began renovating it. They even sanded the entire exterior of the cabin together by hand. One of the factors that had initially drawn Scott and Laurie to the area was the cost of living, along with the warm weather. But the longer they stayed, the more connected they felt to the people, especially the Union community and Northside United Methodist Church, where Laurie works as the secretary.
“It’s not the perfect place,” Scott said. “But I can honestly say that the people we’ve been close to around here have been good, genuine people.”
Scott and Laurie frequently invite people over for dinner or to go fishing in the pond. They have a tradition of asking their guests to sign the back of the wooden staircase. Many of those names belong to Union students.
“I almost feel like they’re my kids,” Scott said. “I can’t solve every problem. None of us can. But I’m here to care for them, and to watch out for them.”
Photo by Mattanah DeWitt
