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Berthoud Weekly Surveyor September 30, 2021 Page 7
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Health h • Fitness • Mind • Spirit piri p irit • Medicine dicine • Well-Being W
Chance stop in Berthoud by dentist 60 years ago changed course of town
By Rick Padden The Surveyor Berthoud would not be Berthoud were it not for a fortunate accident six decades ago. ts first subdivision, its library, museum, primary park, its nursing home, half its non-profit agencies even its paved streets all grew from the chance arrival of one man, the woman he married in , and subsequent partnerships that he formed. obert ruce oc Fickel came through town in fresh out of dental school and riding next to a dental supplies salesman who was doing the horn as the route between enver, heyenne and reeley was known at the time. t was an accident that brought me here, Fickel said onday in the living room of his four-square home on Seventh Street. e got as far as erthoud, but the dental office here just happened to be closed down. Berthoud had no dentist. said bye-bye salesman, and have been here ever since. He’d known since he was a sophomore in high school in dina, o. when he’d ordered his first dental school
catalog, that he’d be a dentist one day. He said there was no question in his mind that the erthoud vacancy was his to fill. oc Fickel may be thought of as one of a kind in the community, but there was another oc Fickel who preceded him one who was also a graduate of ashington University in St. ouis, o. His uncle, .H. oc Fickel was a medical doctor practicing in Alamosa in the s, and when ruce graduated he followed his uncle to olorado, passed the dental exam and was ready to drill. ittle did uncle oc know how successful his nephew oc would be he would later have enough money to fund a full medical scholarship at their alma mater the obert . Fickel scholarship in memory of .H. Fickel. ut it was yet another oc Fickel, waiting in the wings, who helped make it all happen. ust a few blocks from ruce’s new home office at Fourth and ountain, a female general practitioner was working from her four-square home on Seventh Avenue. octor Helen c arty had a patient with bad teeth and sent him to oc Fickel for -rays one day which, as fate
would have it, he decided to deliver in person. One could safely say that oc Fickel has put his mark on erthoud. oberts ake bears his first name, ruce Street bears his middle name and Fickel Park bears his last name. Two subdivisions also carry his name, as did the nursing home he built (early on . The Fickelc arty Foundation bears both their names, funding music, the arts and a multitude of services for area citizens. t wasn’t overnight getting from dentist’s chair to chairman of a small empire, however, the world had a war to wage. Only five months after oc opened his first office in erthoud, the apanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He was on the old side at and failed his physical when he went to enlist in the U.S. avy, but two years later Uncle Sam sent him a telegram: report to ol. ull in Omaha for assignment and procurement. He entered the war effort as a dentist, was moved to ansas ity, o. where he examined the pearly whites of A s ( omen’s Army orp , and then on to Fort eonard ood, o. Helen stayed in erthoud, where she was the only doctor, making weekly trips up to stes Park to treat people there as well. oc finally shipped out to urope for troop support, crawling across the stormy Atlantic Ocean over a threeweek period by ship and landing in ngland before going on to ormandy a month after - ay. He arrived there just in time to care for U.S. soldiers who were pinned down by the ermans. ut one day looked up to the sky and saw , American bombers flying inland, he said, and soon we took off for Paris. As a captain in en. eorge S. Patton’s rd Army, oc commanded the th dental laboratory detachment that supported the U.S. troops that chased the enemy all the way back through ermany and on to zechoslovakia. He road across urope in a twoand-a-half-ton rolling dental lab truck with a red cross on the side. A corporal drove him up to astogne a day after the attle of the ulge ended a scene he says he’ll never forget and he still treasures a copy of Patton’s famous lood and uts speech. hen the war in urope ended, oc hung out with the brass at a villa in France at the invitation of another uncle: ajor en. A. Franklin ibler, assistant chief of staff to en. Omar radley and the th Army roup. Oh, it was quite a time, Fickel said. They had all of the finest china and silver, and incredible food and wine. And there was, just a captain. t was temporary repose, however, as the war in the
Photo by Rick Padden
“Doc” Fickel poses with one of his favorite bronze sculptures, “The Book Worm 2.” This is one of dozens of bronze sculptures Fickel created.
Pacific was still raging. The Army shipped oc’s dental equipment to the Philippines and he was awaiting the ship on which he would follow when “Dang if the war didn’t end. was still in the Army though, and only got a month’s furlough home before being sent to aston, Alabama, and then to a hospital at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. aptain obert ruce Fickel then had a decision to make. He had a shot at making major and could have followed a military career that might have proven disastrous for the little town of erthoud, which had a population just under a thousand at the time. They try to talk you into staying in the military, of course, he said. ut decided to come home. After two and a half years away, oc returned to erthoud, and his wife Helen had not spent a penny of the money he’d sent home during that time. Reprinted from April 20, 2005, Berthoud Weekly Surveyor Robert Bruce “Doc” Fickel was a businessman, philanthropist and dentist. He was 93 when this article was written. He had a bachelors degree in business from the University of Missouri; doctors in dentistry from Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. Doc and Helen had two children, son Bruce, daughter Jane, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren at the time this was written.
