BHAA - Mary Williard, class of 1981 -
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Published on: 2/3/2006
Last Visited: 1/12/2008
(This article, featuring Mary Williard, class of 1981, appeared in The Ohio State University Dental Alumni Society Quarterly, summer/fall 2004 and was reprinted on the website of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation)
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It was after her graduation from the OSU College of Dentistry in 1994, and during a general practice residency at the Carolina Medical Center in Charlotte, that Dr. Williard, a Columbus native, had the opportunity to do a two-month externship in the U.S. Public Health Service (U.S.P.H.S.).This experience brought her to a fork in the road, and instead of pursuing private practice, she chose a road less traveled: She joined the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
While on her first assignment at the Navajo Reservation in Shiprock, New Mexico, she met a recruiter from Alaska who tempted her to visit a U.S.P.H.S. clinic in the city of Bethel.There, adventure beckoned.She discovered a large service area with a population that was still practicing the subsistence way of life.
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Today, six years later, Dr. Williard has carved out a career and a life in Bethel, as the deputy director of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation Dental Clinic.For her, outreach takes on a dramatic perspective.Dr. Williard is one of eight dentists who serve the citizens of Bethel as well as forty-eight towns in a surrounding area as large as Wisconsin."The villages in our service area can be as small as 40 people or as large as 1,200," she notes.Time spent in each village depends upon the number of residents and the need."Our staff tries to visit each village at least once per year," she says.
As with Bethel, there are no roads to most of these village locations and small aircraft is the usual mode of travel."We usually travel out to the villages in small prop planes," she explains."Occasionally, in the winter we can travel to the closer villages by snowmobile or by truck on the river ice road.Regardless of the mode of travel, portable A-dec units and compressors, folding dental chairs, kavoclaves, and the basic instruments and materials - about 700 pounds in all - are trekked in with the dentists.
The "base" clinic in Bethel is highly modern."Our equipment in the Bethel clinics, sub-regional clinics and the new village clinics are state-of-the-art operatories with digital x-ray and intraoral camera capabilities, electronic records, and new or nearly new A-dec units," Dr. Williard explains."Some of the newer clinics have a dedicated dental room with a fully outfitted dental operatory."
In contrast, "Our travel gear does not have all the new gadgets, and can be more physically demanding to work on," she notes."We provide a more restricted array of services when working in a village with portable equipment."For this, she draws upon her OSU experience."I learned very good, basic principles of dental care while at Ohio State," she recalls.
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"We have a serious problem with dental caries," Dr. Williard adds."The predominant ethnic origin of the people that we treat is Yupik Eskimo.Alaskan Native children have a caries rate at least 2.5 times that of the rest of the U.S. when looking at all races," she points out.
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Dr. Williard has adopted three Yupik Eskimo children - nine-year-old Matthew, eight- year-old Shawna, and four-year-old Jayden - after serving three-and-a-half years as their foster parent."They have brought lots of excitement and joy to my life," she says."I feel strongly about keeping them in the area to be able to learn their native culture," she emphasizes.Her two older children spoke Yupik as their first language, and her eldest daughter is enrolled in the Yupik Immersion School, reinforcing that language knowledge.
"In Yupik culture, family is very important and includes distant relations," Dr. Williard says.So, this summer, she has invited the children's paternal grandmother to join them at their fish camp on the river to show them how to clean, cut, dry and smoke salmon.Biking, snowmobiling, sledding and camping are a few other popular pastimes."We also are starting to learn gun safety and subsistance hunting," Dr. Williard says."I am learning all of this right along with my children," she notes."For example, Matthew and I both got our first rifles for our birthdays this year."
At least once a year, Dr. Williard takes her children to visit her family in Columbus. he children love the trees, the stop lights and the automatic doors at the department stores.
What are her plans for the future?"Having a family and a career is tiring, and I am on the verge of making the transition to working part-time to allow more time for my kids," she says.Meanwhile, Bethel will remain home, as she forges a life many can only imagine.For Dr. Mary Williard, the road less traveled - though often paved in dirt - has become a highway to contentment.
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