'No frills,' high credibility dentistry for Andover dentists

In 1953, Doug Dunbar, a recent dental school graduate, met Albert Hulme, an 86-year-old dentist who'd been practicing in Andover since the beginning of the century. The meeting was set up and then ruined by a dental equipment salesman who incorrectly presumed that Dr. Hulme would welcome having a young associate. The meeting should have been an opportunity for a wise, old man to impart his professional wisdom to a young man, but it didn't happen that way, and we'll never know what Dr. Hulme would have said. Within a year, Dr. Hulme cut his hand badly, and he retired a little later, passing away in 1960.

For 34 years after the meeting, Dr. Dunbar practiced dentistry in Andover, retiring in 1987. For 32 of those years, he was the school dentist at Phillips Academy, spending two days a week on the campus. Dr. Hulme's former patients say he was a polite, pleasant, bright man, who knew his craft. The same description would fit Dr. Dunbar. Each man gave patients cordial attentiveness and professional competence. Doug Dunbar's first office was at 89 Main St., just a few feet south of Hulme's office and home. Eight years after he started his practice, Doug and his wife, Rusty, built a home on Alden Road; Doug put a two-chair dental office there. Like Dr. Hulme, Dunbar didn't schedule more than one patient in a time slot. His second chair was reserved for dental emergencies. Dr. Dunbar said that if he finished with a patient early, he'd wait for the next patient to arrive.

They practiced "no frills" dentistry (as Hulme's patients described it). Each cleaned patients' teeth and worked without a dental hygienist. Dr. Hulme had no help of any kind, even answering his own door. Dr. Dunbar had a dental assistant for 27 years (Janet Morrissey), who assisted him without working on patients directly. Patients sat in slightly tilted chairs, and the dentists stood while working over them. I asked Dr. Dunbar if he ever had a bad back. He said he'd not. Dunbar played a lot of baseball, softball and tennis, and he thought those activities kept him healthy.

"Doc," as he was often called when playing ball, was in the town's organized baseball and softball leagues from the early 1950s through the mid '80s. He was in his 60s when he quit, and his teammates and opponents were decades younger. Doc was an outstanding contact hitter and a fine fielder, and softball pitcher. It is not exaggeration to add the adjective "legendary" in front of his name. When he wasn't playing ball, he was coaching Little League or umpiring.

Sam Washburn, who lives on Oriole Drive, was a 5-year-old patient when he first saw Dr. Dunbar. Sam tells this story:

"Dr. Dunbar was a Little League umpire and I played catcher. One day the batter foul tipped the pitch and my natural reflex was to close my eyes and look away, which exposed my ear to a painful blow from the ball. Dr. Dunbar leaned over and explained that I should never close my eyes and never turn my head so that foul balls would hit my face mask. That's all it took. He had such credibility with me about anything having to do with pain that I accepted his advice willingly and became a good defensive catcher."

Doug Dunbar grew up in Cheshire, Conn., graduating from Cheshire Academy in 1941, a few months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. His father, a teacher at Cheshire, brought his family to Andover when he took a job at P.A. Doug attended Allegheny College for two years before enlisting in the Navy. He became a medical corpsman assigned to the Sixth Marine Division.

On April 2, 1945, he helped set up a field hospital during the land assault on Okinawa. This battle was the bloodiest of the Pacific War, with more 200,000 deaths. There were 72,000 American casualties; of that number, 12,513 were killed or missing. The Sixth Division, including Navy Medical Corpsman, lost 1,700 men with 7,400 wounded. For extremely meritorious, heroic action, the Division was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation.

In early August, a month after the end of the Battle of Okinawa, Dunbar was training for the invasion of Japan when two atom bombs ended the war. He says that the men in training, himself included, had been certain they'd die in the invasion. Men sat on their bunks, crying with relief, when the Japanese surrendered.

After the war and a brief stint with the Marines in China, Dunbar returned to Allegheny College. Before graduating in 1947, he was captain of the baseball team. His experience as a corpsman guided him to the medical profession; he chose dentistry. In 1953, he received his Doctor of Dental Science degree from the University of Pennsylvania and returned to Andover to practice.

I asked Dr. Dunbar what he thought was the most important dental innovation in his era. His answer was the high-speed drill. It was faster and less painful. Doug says he was using the high-speed drill by 1960. (My wife remembers visiting her elderly family dentist in Berkeley, Calif. in 1975; not only was he still using a slow drill, he was using a foot-powered, slow drill.) The high-speed drill was marketed in 1957. Before then, the slow drills operated at 3,000 revolutions per minute. High-speed drills run at 200,000 rpms and higher.

I asked Dr. Dunbar why novocaine, invented in 1906, was slow to be used for routine cavity repairs. He says he offered it to his patients from the time he opened his practice. He was trained to do so in dental school. However, most patients in the early years of his practice chose the familiar dental pain over the needle. Doug says the needles were so big that he'd sometimes sneak up behind patients to spare them having to see the needle until the last instant. Doug says novocaine use ("Novocain" is a trade name) became common when sharper, smaller, throwaway needles were developed -- making injections easier for both patients and dentists. Another point Doug made was that novocaine and other pain-killers improved over time.

Doug and Rusty, who were married in 1955, have two daughters and three grandchildren. Doug served on the Andover Board of Health for 39 years. Rusty was president of the League of Women Voters and served on the Finance Committee for 12 years, three years as chairwoman. At the Town Meeting last April, they jointly received the Virginia Cole Community Service Award.

Doug enjoys his retirement and plays tennis several times a week. Dr. Hulme would have been proud of Dr. Dunbar and enjoyed his company.

Bill Dalton is a former town moderator and selectman. His e-mail address is billdalton@andovertownie.com, and he welcomes stories and comments.

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