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A Modest 'Lion' and a Lifelong Mentor Black History Month
Dentist Spends his time Building up a Community
Sandra Parker-Spears has worked as Roland McGoodwin’s chair-side dental assistant for 38 years and seen hundreds examples of what she calls his gentle heart.
McGoodwin paid the orthodontia bill for an Avondale boy who uses a wheelchair. He raced out of his McMillan Street dental office one afternoon to care for people injured in a car crash until paramedics arrived. Low-income adults received deep discounts for care or wouldn’t be billed at all by McGoodwin. He was among the first dentists in Cincinnati to offer free blood-pressure checks to his patients.
Since 1966, all but the past two years in the same small Walnut Hills practice, this soft-spoken dentist has given a lot of people a lot to smile about. He’s still at it, at 78, working two days a week at Neighborhood Health Care, Inc., just around the corner on Gilbert Avenue.
“He’s a good guy, or I wouldn’t have stayed with him all this time,” Parker-Spears, 61, said. “He doesn’t like to take credit for anything.”
On Friday, though, McGoodwin will get some overdue credit. Of the four people honored as Glorifying the Lions award winners by the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH) at its annual luncheon, he’s the least-known outside of the city’s black community.
The name of the award, presented to people 65 or older, originates in the African proverb that says, “Until the lions have their own historian, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter.”
McGoodwin, like many of his African-American contemporaries, has written a personal black history of excellence that traces from Jim Crow America to Barack Obama’s America.
Times changed. The man didn’t. The first day of Black History Month 2012 finds him where he’s always been.
To read the full article, please visit: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120131/NEWS/301310107/Dentist-McGoodwin-modest-lion-?odyssey=nav%7Chead
