Bragg and the Burbanks

Several months ago, my parents came to visit us in North Carolina. I had the pleasure of picking them up from the airport and bringing them back to our cozy 2-bedroom apartment in Oxford. As we casually chit-chatted our way home, my mother mentioned to me that Jarom Burbank, a family friend who had graduated around the same time as a couple of my older siblings, and his wife and kids were now living in North Carolina. Jarom had joined the Army, and was serving as a military dentist on Fort Bragg. I was pleased to hear of a few fellow Aggies being so nearby, and made a mental note to contact Jarom in the near future.

Fast forward 1 week.

While at a church function on the night before my parents left for Utah, we just happened to run into the very same Jarom Burbank in Raleigh, NC, about an hour from both of our houses! What are the odds?!

Jarom wasted no time in inviting Celeste and I down to Fort Bragg to visit, and Celeste and I wasted no time in taking him up on his offer. As soon as we got back from our travels in Europe and Utah, we were Bragg-bound.


It was a great little getaway, and it gave us a chance to make some new friends, see a stunning military facility, and to participate in one of my favorite pastimes: bashing BYU (Jarom and Desi, his wife, were both Ambassadors for Utah State, and both bleed Aggie Blue). It had been at least 10 year since I last saw Jarom, and had not at that point met his wife and kids: Anna, 3, a tornado, and Nia, 1, a tornado aggravater/playmate.


Fort Bragg was pretty incredible. There are 50,000 soldiers there, not including wives and families, which more than double that figure. It’s the home of the Airborne division of the Army, and is where many of the paratroopers of D-Day came to be trained, including the group in the HBO series Band of Brothers. It’s a very historic military base, and we were grateful to see it with the help of some very knowledgeable tour guides.

The trip was short, but sweet. And it had to be short, because in just another two days Celeste and I are heading to Boston, New York, and Maine to celebrate our anniversary and as a final hoorah before school starts back up. Now no one can say we didn't make the most out of this summer.