6 minute read
Connections, Redemption and Dentistry
Kerry K. Carney, DDS, CDE
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Connections. We seem to be hardwired to look for connections. When I was studying in Canada, I was frequently quizzed on my knowledge of just which famous people were Canadian. (Lorne Greene, Neil Young, Wayne Gretzky, Shania Twain, Sandra Oh, Celine Dion, Justin Bieber, Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Gosling, Joni Mitchell, Michael J. Fox and K.D. Lang to name a few.) At the time, I thought this was meant as a reminder to me that not every star was American.
Years later, with a friend of Greek heritage, I would watch the credits at the end of a film and try to spot the Greek names. It was then that the real importance of these exercises became evident. It was all about the connections. It was the tribal connection that was being sought out and acknowledged. It is not unlike the connection we enjoy with sports teams and fans. We are connected by emotion and enthusiasm to the team and to the other fans. We feel a similar connection when we find out someone is from our school or neighborhood. We even recognize the pull of a tribal connection within our own profession.
On more than one occasion, I have found myself reminding someone else that some third person is a dentist, was a dentist or was married or somehow related to a dentist. This connection seeking may explain why I spent several hours one weekend looking up famous people in history who were dentists.
There were several individuals that California dental school graduates might recall: Doc Holliday (dentist, gunslinger and card player), Painless Parker (the man who turned dentistry into a traveling show) and Robert Semple (one of the early players in California statehood and the co-founder of Benicia, California). But there were some interesting, though more obscure, connections between famous people and the practice of dentistry: Peter the Great of Russia (who was so fond of extracting teeth that members of his royal court would hide if they had a dental problem), Barney Clark (Seattle dentist and recipient of the first artificial heart) and Zane Gray (dentist and author of popular stories of the American West).
Amateur and professional sports produced a number of dentists. The most contemporary (and one of very few women recognized) was the 2022 curling Olympian Tara Peterson (dentist from Shoreview, Minnesota).
There was Gentleman Jim Lonborg of the Boston Red Sox, who won the Cy Young award in 1967 and went on to graduate from Tufts and had a successful “post season” practicing dentistry.
In basketball, I found “the owl without a vowel,” Bill Mlkvy. At Temple University, on March 3, 1951, he set a Division I record that still exists. It is the oldest extant individual record in the NCAA. That night Dr. Mlkvy scored 54 unanswered or interrupted points and a game total of 73 personal points in the 99-69 win. He played only one year for the Philadelphia Warriors because his dental school obligations necessitated missing games. Dr. Mlkvy explained, “I’d dress up for games having just extracted a tooth a few hours earlier. My mind was on my patients.”
Then I proceeded on to football. I found Les Horvath, who was one of two Heisman Trophy winners to go into dentistry after recognition in football. He played for Ohio State University and won the Heisman Trophy in 1944.
The second Heisman Trophy winner to go into dentistry was Billy Cannon. He won his Heisman playing for LSU in 1959, the same year he ran an amazing 89-yard return for a touchdown against Mississippi on Halloween night. That play would become known as “The Punt Return” and be replayed innumerable times. It is still accessible online. Though not as famous, Dr. Cannon’s tackle in the last few seconds of that game kept Mississippi from scoring what would have been a game-winning touchdown that night. LSU won that game and Dr. Cannon proceeded to play professional football for 11 years. In the off seasons, he earned degrees from University of Tennessee and Loyola University and became a successful orthodontist in Baton Rouge.
What happened to Dr. Cannon after that is even more important than our connection with him as a dental professional.
In 1983, Dr. Cannon was arrested. The “Secret Service … dug up $5 million in phony $100 bills on Dr. Cannon’s property, and he was charged with possession of counterfeit money and conspiracy. He earned an estimated $300,000 a year from his dental practice but was reportedly in financial trouble from gambling debts and bad investments. He had been in dozens of lawsuits, most over unpaid bills. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to federal prison. He was released in 1986, after serving almost three years of a five-year term.”
Life went from bad to worse for Dr. Cannon. His practice was in ruins. He refused to answer the “why” that everyone wanted to ask. How could he fall so precipitously from his pedestal of fame?
“In 1997, after declaring bankruptcy, Dr. Cannon found work as the chief of dentistry at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.” 2 The prison dental service was in a shambles. Dr. Cannon cleaned up the operation of the Angola dental service so successfully that the head of the penitentiary asked him to do the same for the medical service as well.
When Dr. Cannon “talked about his work at the prison, you could hear the pride in his voice. The standard glory-days stories and aw-shucks one-liners disappeared when he discussed the ins and outs of treatment. He began to sound less like a former legend and more like a hardworking dentist.” “He scheduled all inmates for appointments, forcing them to decline if they didn’t want treatment. The warden said Dr. Cannon cared about the inmates and “ … the inmates love him, and because they love him, he cares more and won’t dare let’em down.”
Dr. Cannon did not offer much explanation about why everything went wrong and why he fell so far from the hero’s pedestal on which Louisiana had placed him. He said, “I did the crime and I did the time. I haven’t had a speeding ticket since.” 3 He had a wild and rebellious adolescence, and perhaps his most insightful comment was: “There was times right when I got out of school when everybody was a friend and everybody was a good guy … After a while, you say, they’re not friends and they’re really not good guys. Now how much did it cost you to make that decision? Sometimes more than you want to talk about.”
That statement brings it all home. Connections are important, but they are not always what they seem. Connections can get us in trouble, connections can facilitate our empathy for another’s predicament and pain. Connections can help us understand how our profession can bring redemption. Billy Cannon fell from grace. His profession, dentistry, helped him find his way back.
