Exploring Life’s very Big Adventure Together
David and Jerilyn Renfroe’s childhood homes shared the exact same number: 1725. But they were located nearly 1,500 miles apart, and the couple wouldn’t meet until college.
In 1970, while attending the University of Houston and living at home to save money, David joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He then applied and was admitted to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He was thrilled to trade in the hot, flat landscape of Texas for snow-covered mountains and skiing on the weekends.
Raised in Salt Lake City in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains, Jerilyn attended the University of Utah for a year while also living at home. When her parents saw how hard she was working, in school and at her waitressing job, they agreed to help her go to BYU, her dream.
Jerilyn and David first got to know each other on the Utah ski slopes, where they found an ideal microclimate for skiing. Water evaporates from the Great Salt Lake, and the wind blows it up the mountain – resulting in “the best powder snow in the world,” he said. Up to 11 friends would pile into David’s green Pontiac Bonneville and head to the slopes – stashing skis, poles, boots and other gear in the roomy trunk.
The pair got engaged in February 1972 while driving back to Provo after a ski trip. It was obvious to David that they would marry. “What other girl would go cross-country skiing with you?” he said. But she grew up skiing and drinking out of mountaintop streams of freshly melted snow. “What kind of a girl does this? The one I’m going to marry, that’s who.”
Thus was the beginning of their very big adventure together. Sharing a love for life, they have traveled the world, often with some or all of their children. The places they enjoy most are the ones that nature made – oceans, lakes, snow-capped mountains and countrysides. And through all the ups and downs, they have enjoyed life to the fullest.
Starting With a Strong Foundation
Both of their fathers served in World War II, and hers also in the Korean War. Jerilyn was born while her dad, a waist gunner, was home on leave, and he returned from service when she was 2. David’s dad was an airplane mechanic in the Army Air Corps.
David’s family goes back to 1839 in Arkansas; his dad was born and raised in Russellville, and his mother was raised in New Mexico, Russellville and Fayetteville. In Houston, David’s dad worked at an oil tool company, and then spent his evenings fixing people’s cars in their home garage. David helped out, and his dad advised him to become an engineer.
As a teen, David rebuilt the family car, a 1952 Chevrolet, six-cylinder standard – overhauling the engine and transmission, and refurbishing the interior. His dad gave him the car after he’d put in all that work. He also built a sailboat, and learned to sail in Galveston as part of a sailboat racing crew at the local yacht club.
Jerilyn learned to sew from her mother and grandmother, and selections of her smocking work have been displayed in the main building at BTV. She loved the competition of sports in her youth, and cried herself to sleep because being a girl prevented her participation in Little League baseball. She later took up tennis after moving to Arkansas.
Jerilyn started playing violin in grade school, and continued through junior high, high school, and in BYU orchestras. She also sang in choir and was part of the Highland Lassies, a dance group that marched on the field at halftime. They both learned to waterski in their youth.
After graduating from BYU, they went on church missions — her to Argentina for 18 months, him to Germany for two years — and stayed in touch by writing letters. A month and a day after he got home, they married in the Provo Temple in September 1974.
Jerilyn had begun college as a special education major, but switched to childhood development and family relations. They had married and started a family, so she would complete her degree over the next few years by long distance.
Building a Memorable Life Together
Newly married, the Renfroes moved to Rockdale, Texas, where David worked for Alcoa Aluminum. He felt like a maintenance engineer, while he aspired to work at the forefront of technology and discovery. Jerilyn encouraged him to get his Ph.D.
They moved to Bryan-College Station, where he attended Texas A&M, earned high grades, and got a master’s degree and a doctorate, also in mechanical engineering. David then took a job at General Motors Institute in Michigan, which was “like Disneyland for engineers.” After two years, David’s parents had moved from Houston to Russellville, and he and Jerilyn wanted to escape the extreme cold of the North.
David approached the University of Arkansas about teaching mechanical engineering and was offered the job as a professor. The couple moved their family to Fayetteville in 1982, three days before Christmas. They loaded their freshly cut, fully decorated Christmas tree into the back of their truck, drove it to Arkansas, and set it up in their new home. He went on to teach full time from 1982 to 1997, and as an adjunct professor until 2015.
Early on, he started a Mini Baja project, in which his vehicle dynamics students each designed and built an off-road vehicle using an 8 horsepower Briggs and Stratton engine, and then they’d race them. “A lot of the notions and ideas about how to build a proper ATV came from the work we did with that,” he said.
With his own consulting business — Renfroe Engineering, and later Engineering Institute — they designed and built a safer ATV and started manufacturing it at a factory in Fayetteville. When the business went bankrupt in 2008, they took the design to China, where HiSun produced it. David had been in dozens of lawsuits against ATV manufacturers, and their design did everything that he said ATVs should do.
Through his consulting firm, David also did accident reconstruction and analysis for the 1997 car crash of Princess Diana and the 2013 car crash of the actor Paul Walker, and became an expert witness for plaintiffs in hundreds of lawsuits. Some of those involved the Jeep CJ7, which had a high center of gravity and narrow track width, and wasn’t designed for high speeds. With a sudden turn and correction, it could easily flip over and cause fatalities. In 1984, Jeep produced a model with a wider track width and lower center of gravity.
David also was involved in about 250 Ford Explorer cases; though the tires were blamed for accidents, he determined that the suspension was a big factor. In his testimony, he recommended a wider track width, lower center of gravity, and an independent rear suspension – plus stronger roofs that wouldn’t collapse in rollover instances.
Family Adventures and Other Travels
From the mid-1970s to 1990, the couple had five children: Heather, Allen, Jenalyn, Kathryn and Kevin. During David’s career, Jerilyn was grateful she could stay home with them. “Sometimes society will say, you’re just a stay-at-home mom. But it was the biggest blessing to raise kids and be able to be there for them,” she said.
As they raised their children, they continued to have adventures big and small, creating memories to last a lifetime, and capturing them in photos and videos. They’ve digitized their archives for easy viewing on their big screen TV. One video shows a trip where they sailed between St. Lucia and St. Vincent though 30 miles of open ocean, built sand castles on the beach, and visited the spot where “Pirates
of the Caribbean” was filmed. They also have photos from their own childhoods, and of skiing and rock climbing in Utah in college, and video of an old truck restored with a grandson – one of their 19 grandchildren.
In 2016, David sold his consulting business to his partner. He and Jerilyn spent the next two years as missionaries in Africa, doing member leadership training in Tamale, Ghana, where their church was brand new.
There are 76 languages spoken in Ghana, and English is now the national language. Jerilyn taught literacy to women who hadn’t attended school. “To teach someone to read who didn’t know her shapes was amazing,” she said. “It opened up the world to her to know what a map and a calendar and a clock were.”
Unlike the United States, residences in Ghana don’t have house numbers, making them difficult to locate. The Renfroes starting using their phones’ GPS, dropping a pin at someone’s door and recording the data. He made maps and taught them how to locate their homes. He also taught them the Boy Scout trick of magnetizing a needle and floating it in water to create a compass.
Soon after they returned, their daughter Kathryn’s husband died in 2020, and she moved with her four sons to Fayetteville. In 2022, Kathryn was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer that was resistant to treatment, and she died in April 2024. The oldest sister, Heather, with husband Mark, with five children of their own, adopted Kathryn’s sons. “I can’t tell you what a miracle it is to have them adopting all those boys,” Jerilyn said. “We’re in a happy place, a very happy chapter. The boys feel loved and are thriving.”
New Address, Still Home Sweet Home
During Kathryn’s illness, the Renfroes sol
d their house in Fayetteville and moved to an apartment at Butterfield. They eventually moved into a Village Home. They had learned about BTV through fellow church members, and they got involved soon after they arrived. David served as Village Home chair, and later helped start an Energy Committee to assess potential energy savings for the village. He’s currently filling a vacancy on the Board of Directors, where he’s a conduit of information between residents and the board.
They both like to read, often with audiobooks. She enjoys Pilates and other fitness classes, including line dancing. They regularly ride their bicycles on theRazorback Greenway. And after pausing by Lake Fayetteville to watch people rowing, they decided to take lessons themselves.
Since last fall, they’ve been building a rowboat from a kit in their garage. She’s painted the interior, and he’s built new outriggers from catalpa wood. They are naming it Kathryn and plan to launch it at Lake Fayetteville on the anniversary of her death.
David & Jerilyn Renfroe’s Village Home
Words by Michelle Parks | Photos by Stephen Ironside
