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Ferguson living life in style
Doug Flanagan/Post-Register
Jennifer Ferguson enjoys her job at Desert Sun Dental.
In the back of Jennifer Ferguson’s high school annual from her senior year at Quincy High School, a message from Josey Ferguson, then a sophomore, is scrawled that reads, “Have a nice life.”
“We looked at that a few days ago and laughed,” Jennifer Ferguson said. “Little did he know at the time that the life he was writing about would be his life, too.”
Indeed, Josey Ferguson and the former Jennifer Graaff are now married and are enjoying a comfortable life in Quincy.
Jennifer has worked as a dental assistant at Desert Sun Dental for the past seven years. Even though she dreamed about doing other things when she was younger, Ferguson has grown to embrace her current occupation.
“What I do is so much more than just assisting a doctor,” she said. “You’re being a patient’s advocate for somebody who can’t really talk, so you have to read body language to see if they’re comfortable. I enjoy the job because of the patients, the people. It’s always fun to see them outside of the office.
“And on the big cases, when people are not happy with their smile, I enjoy helping to fix it. It’s amazing to see people when we tell them we can fix their smile, and they say, ‘You can do that?’ It’s cool to see the before-and-after pictures. I get to see the whole process, and I like that. That’s the best part.”
Ferguson grew up in Quincy and graduated from high school in 1997. She then attended Washington State University, where she majored in fashion.
“I don’t think I can use (my degree) here in Quincy, but I still have that dream,” Ferguson said. “I originally wanted to do fashion, and it kept getting pushed back. First I wanted to go to Paris, then New York, then I was like, ‘I can do costume design in Los Angeles,’ and then finally I decided to stay here.”
However, Ferguson still counts sewing as one of her main hobbies. She is able to create things such as Holloween costumes for her children, 3-year-old Jaxon and 18-month-old Jourdan, and she even created her own wedding dress.
“That really stressed my mom out because I finished the Thursday before the wedding,” Ferguson said. “I have my grandma’s talent for procrastination. I guess I just did it myself because I knew what I wanted, and I knew I might not be able to find it. My mom still made me try on a bunch of different dresses and take pictures, even though we knew I was making my own dress.
“I don’t have a lot of time to sew now, but time will pass and I’ll be able to fall back into it.”
Ferguson is definitely happy to have settled down in Quincy. She doesn’t have any real plans to leave for anywhere else, and as she noted, with children and both sets of grandparents who live close by, moving would be a tough sell anyway.
After graduating from college, she lived in the Seattle area for a few months and quickly began missing her small-town roots.
“That was so not my way of life,” she said. “I’m happy to be back home.”
