ALUMNI // A FAMILY LEGACY
A Family
Legacy There’s a group of healthcare providers who are passionate about dentistry and oral health, and the power they hold to improve lives. It is a passion that has driven three generations of dental professionals from one family. They all pursued – or are pursuing – degrees in dentistry at the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry on the Health Sciences Center Campus in Oklahoma City, the first three-generation family to do so at the college. For Wyatt Jones of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, dentistry is a thread woven into his earliest childhood memories. Now in his second year at the OU College of Dentistry, Wyatt represents the third successive generation at the college. He said he chose dentistry as career path, but equally important, as a way of life, modeled by his father, Robert Stephen Jones, D.D.S., (1992), and grandfather, Gary Dean Jones, D.D.S., (1977), who died in 2006. “I was only 11 when Papa died, but I remember how I admired and respected him as a very wise man. I learned from my dad and my grandfather that dentistry is a lot more than just being a dentist.” Wyatt remembers a paper he wrote as a third-grader about his goal to become a dentist. “‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ was never really a question for me. It was always Plan A, and there was no Plan B.” Stephen Jones remembers his father, Gary, as a man of humble beginnings. With a strong sense of community service and loyalty, the late Dr. Jones was keenly aware of hardship and adversity faced by many friends, neighbors and family members. “It didn’t sit well with him that some people had very limited access to oral healthcare because of financial constraints,” Stephen Jones said of his father. “It fueled his desire for higher education and his choice of dentistry as a career. And within his practice he worked to make it possible for more people to access needed care.” After military service, Gary used his veteran’s benefits
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to gain his degree and study dentistry. He married Linda Jones, D.H., also a College of Dentistry graduate (1977), and they established a dental practice in Stillwell, Oklahoma, where they continued to see patients until 2000. Linda no longer works in dental hygiene, but works actively with the Cherokee Nation dental program. As a youngster, Wyatt spent considerable time at his grandfather’s practice, and later, at his father’s office occasionally helping with miscellaneous office tasks or just hanging out. He had opportunities to accompany his dad on emergency calls, and would often drop by to talk or ask questions. “I respected and admired both men. But my dad was my number-one role model - the person I wanted to be,” Jones said. It was during Wyatt’s senior year in high school that his father accepted a job with Cherokee Nation, the largest tribal health system in the nation, now with 1.4 million patient visits annually. Having discovered an innate ability
Th e U n i v e r s i t y o f O k l a h o m a- C o l l e g e o f D e n t i s t r y / 2 0 2 0 M a g a z i n e
