Caring Dentist with old-fashioned values to retire
0 Comments | The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, Norfolk, VA, Mar 29, 2009 | by HARRY MINIUM
By Harry Minium
The Virginian-Pilot
In 51 years as a dentist, Norman Patrick Moore never turned away a patient who could not afford to pay.
He was raised Catholic and graduated from Holy Trinity Catholic School in Ocean View, where he was taught that to help those in need is a virtue.
So he provided discounts, worked out payment plans, or filled cavities for free for hundreds of patients.
“That’s why I’m 81 and haven’t retired,” he said with a laugh. “I couldn’t afford to.”
That changes this week, when he hangs up his picks, probes and mirrors for good. His office, on Glenrock Road near the Gallery at Military Circle shopping mall, will close Tuesday.
Moore has been in the Military Circle area since 1959. He has built a loyal clientele of patients, many from Virginia Beach and Chesapeake.
He’s from an old Norfolk family – his grandfather, Harry P. Moore, was a Virginian-Pilot reporter who wrote about the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903. Moore maintains the old-fashioned values his parents instilled in him.
He has never advertised, even though most of his competitors did, insisting that word of mouth was the best advertising.
If you were his patient and happened to break a tooth on a weekend, he didn’t send you to the emergency room.
Mary Jo Ward, who lives in the Hickory section of Chesapeake, said in her 49 years as his patient, Moore came through in more than one emergency.
One Thanksgiving morning, her son, Andy, developed a toothache. After eating turkey and dressing, Moore left his family, drove to his office and took care of Andy’s tooth.
Early on a Sunday morning one year, Ward’s son James woke up with a swollen face. Moore skipped church to fix the abscess. On another night, she returned from a religious activity in Richmond with an aching tooth. “It was late in the evening,” she said. “He said, ‘Come on over and we’ll take care of it.’
“You can’t find a dentist like him any more. I don’t know what we’re going to do without him.”
Neither do Roland and Delouise Sawyer, who live in the Larrymore Lawns section of Norfolk.
“We call him Dr. Painless,” Delouise Sawyer said. “Because when you leave there, you are not in pain. He always made sure of that.
“We’ve been going to him for 37 years. He’s going to be missed.”
Moore almost didn’t become a dentist. He was an engineering major at Saint Vincent College, a liberal arts Catholic school in Latrobe, Pa., when he took physical chemistry “and I found that course wasn’t for me.”
He switched majors, graduating with a degree in biology. He was drafted into the Army in 1950, where he worked on the nation’s fledging atomic bomb program.
In 1954, he entered dental school at the Medical College of Virginia. He began practicing in Great Bridge in 1958 and in 1959, moved his office to Norfolk.
He leaves with no regrets, he said, but with one good dog story. The Norfolk Police once asked him to cap a tooth of a police dog that had been injured in the line of duty.
He told the police he would do the surgery, but only if an anesthesiologist rendered the dog unconscious. “I’m not sticking my hand in that mouth otherwise,” he said.
At 81, he says he’s beginning to slow down.
“I used to see 25 patients a day,” he said
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