By Deb Peterson
Jessica Brown and her husband, Bill, didn’t have high hopes when their friends, Jeff Quick and Tom Kiley, suggested they look at a house for sale in Cotter. Jeff was a realtor at the time for Larry Black & Associates. They had looked at many, many houses, and none of them had met the Browns’ expectations, which were high.
Bill had built their first house in Little Rock himself, and then he built their second home, a copy of the first but with all of the changes they wanted, also in Little Rock.
“It was the perfect house for us,” Jessica says. “It had all the little tweaks we missed in the first house.”
But the Browns felt it was time to move again. They had a little boy, Brody, with a future to think about.
“It was time to come home,” Jessica says. She’s from Norfork; Bill from Salem. “This was always home for us, and we wanted Brody in the schools here.”
Bill and Jessica met at the University of Central Arkansas, married, and Jessica was working with a neurosurgeon as a physical therapist. Bill had a health science degree and was working for a medical implant company. What you might be surprised to learn is that they were both national level wakeboarders (!), something Jessica was a little shy about sharing with me.
It all started in the late 90s when they would get together with college buddies, pool resources and dollars, and spend weekends on the lake. Someone had a boat, another student a wakeboard, and someone else bought a rope. They pitched in for gas. One weekend, they decided to drive to Shreveport to watch a professional wakeboard tournament. It was preceded by an amateur tournament.
“We sat there and watched, and then looked at each other and said, ‘We can do that!’” Jessica remembers.
She won the U.S. National Championship in 2000 and competed in Rio de Janeiro on the 2001 American Water Ski Association’s Wakeboard World Competition Team.
“Bill was right in there, too,” Jessica says, “but the men’s competition is tougher.”
Jessica was 25 at the time, and wakeboarding is a sport for the younger set. It’s tough on a body. Someone as knowledgeable about the body as Jessica, a physical therapist with a doctorate, understands just how tough. She was willing to give up competition, but was looking forward to spending time on the lakes back home.
They found jobs — Jessica at Baxter Regional Medical Center as a staff physical therapist, and Bill as a licensed agent at TLC Insurance Group — and sold their house. They just needed to find “home,” and the search wasn’t going well. It wasn’t practical for them to build again, and while they hadn’t given up hope, they weren’t particularly enthusiastic about the visit to Cotter.
As the group drove up to the home built by Mark Johnson, hanging off the bluff over the White River, Jessica remembers thinking it didn’t have the brick and stone exterior she was hoping for, but it was “cute.”
“We walked in and turned the corner into the living room, and I said, ‘Oh. OH. Oooh!”
Jessica and Bill walked out the French doors onto the deck and fell instantly in love with the full view of the mountainside and the gentle bend of the White River in the valley below.
But it was her entrance into the master bedroom that sealed the deal for Jessica. She was delighted by two full walls of windows overlooking the river, with no sense at all of neighbors, other than wildlife.
“We need to live here,” she said to Bill. “I could wake up to this view every morning.”
Bill took a little more convincing. The place had its charms and its challenges. The dramatically sloping lawn made it tricky to find places for gardening, mowing, sheds, boat parking, and play space for Brody.
Cotter’s Big Spring Park is less than a mile from their front door, with its swimming hole, playground equipment, and boat launch. That was a plus. They were also close to Buffalo City, where they often launch to visit both the White and Buffalo Rivers.
“The Buffalo is my sanctuary,” Jessica says. “It calls to me.”
It’s no wonder. Every year for the past 29 years, Jessica’s family — Mom Sherry Alman, sister Masa, and her brother, Jared (her father, Roger, passed away three years ago — has gathered on the Buffalo over the Fourth of July for three days and two nights to float from Rush to Buffalo City. They take enough fish to eat for dinner the first night, but after that, “we have to catch what we eat,” Jessica says. “The Landrum family goes with us, and it’s always a challenge and a competition.”
Brody was six months old on his first trip. “He loves the Buffalo River, too,” Jessica says.
In the end, Bill gave up his dream of acreage in exchange for the stunning view and plans to build a shop and raised garden beds. Solutions. The lower level also held not only another deck with a fantastic view, but space for the couple’s new business: Safe Living Consulting & Designs, helping people live safely and independently at home.
Jeff knew during that first visit that Bill was sold.
“I wasn’t a realtor all that long,” he says, “but I was always amazed to see a person’s body language and facial expressions change when they found a place that felt like home.”
He saw that happen with Jessica and Bill.
“I love Bill and Jessica with all my heart,” he says. “It was a group effort to get them back home, and it was really great to be a part of connecting them with the place they call home.”
It’s been three and a half years now that the Browns have been home. Brody is in kindergarten and learning to surf behind the boat. It won’t be long before he’s up on a wakeboard. The family keeps a ski boat at a marina on Lake Norfork.
They visit Big Spring Park weekly, at least, and fish the rivers often.
They are immersed in nature whether outside or at home. One of their friends, Joann Satterfield, said upon visiting their home, “It feels like the outside is inside.”
“Every day I feel blessed to wake up here,” Jessica says. “Every day I love it more. We like to travel, but we are so thankful to come home to this.”
Learn more about Safe Living Consulting & Designs at safelivingdesigns.com. M! October/November 2015
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