Galesburg's Bad Boy

The only dentist in Nome, Alaska calls himself "the best dentist on Front Street and President and Secretary of the Nome Dental Society." He is tall, husky, pink-cheeked Dr. Maxwell Raymond Kennedy, 26. Last week he went home for a visit in Galesburg, Ill., telling his own success story of dental triumph among Nome's 1,500 prospectors, Eskimos, saloonkeepers, trappers and government officials. He also went home to get his teeth fixed--there is no other dentist within 560 miles of Nome.

Max Kennedy began as Galesburg's bad boy. At Galesburg's Knox College he had such fun with firecrackers that he was temporarily expelled. He finally finished three years' work, progressed to Northwestern University to study dentistry. When graduation neared in 1941, Nome's only physician, Dr. Thomas Morcam, arrived at Northwestern to interest a dentist in Nome's teeth. Several volunteered, but Kennedy got the job because of his eagerness, brash temperament, lack of family ties, and a perforated eardrum which the Army found distasteful.

He arrived in Nome on Aug. 25, found a two-room office in the Wallace Hotel's new frame building on Front Street at $1,380 a year. The rooms were "all painted up white and very classy." The windows looked out on the Bering Sea. Shortly the sea surged up and swept away the drugstore next door, almost removed the dentist's office.

Dr. Kennedy had to wade in on the neglected teeth of Nome and hundreds of miles around, deal on the spot with cases which any ordinary dentist at home would refer to a specialist. When dentistry was over for the day (often around midnight), overflow guests of the crowded hotel often slept on beds made up in the anteroom. Dr. Kennedy's prices were fairly high--$20 for an inlay--but not high as Alaska prices went: coal was $40 a ton, Coca-Cola 25-c- a bottle (when it could be had), watermelons $6 each.

The dental day began at 8 when Nome's telephone operator, named Jeff, called: "Come on now, Doc. You get up." Dr. Kennedy got to work at 9, shooing late hotel guests out of his waiting room. When a patient came in "who looked as though he had cleaned his teeth with his elbow," Dr. Kennedy told him about toothbrushes and not to come back for treatment until he had used one. The Doctor's hardest cases were the shattered mouths of saloon brawlers.

Nome seemed to Dr. Kennedy no place to settle down and raise a family but, said he last week, "It's swell for getting experience. I expect to stay there for a few more years--at least until the war is over." Next month, after seeing his girl (a WAAC), he will return, start "letting those Eskimos hound me to death again." Further incentive for being hounded to death: $1,000-$2,000 a month gross, which has allowed Dr. Kennedy to pay all his debts and show a nice profit. In the U.S. he would be lucky if he were making final payments on his office furniture.

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