become certified in basic orthodontic practices. The AOS also provides mentorship and support for dentists seeking to serve their patients through basic comprehensive orthodontics. We talked for hours. Nate was trying to bring the conversation back to a few important interview questions he still had. I, on the other hand, was going with the flow, wanting to catch every piece of the picture I was getting of the dental landscape at the time and Dr. Wyatt’s passion for helping patients receive better dental care worldwide. For Dr. Wyatt, orthodontics was about getting the patients the help they needed, encouraging sustainable practices for dentists like him, and fostering a healthy dental ecosystem. He envisioned a healthy cycle of diag-nosis and referral between general and pediatric dentists and orthodon-tists: a cycle based on knowledge, not the withholding of knowledge. “You can’t diagnose a patient and send them to the orthodontist if you don’t understand that they need a diagno-sis,” he noted. That made sense to me from my own experience. I was a case study of someone who never would have made it to the orthodontist if it weren’t for my dentist having the expertise to explain what orthodon-tics could do for me. Touring the Archives & Ran ch After the interview, Dr. Wyatt showed us his archives. This part of the tour was just another testament to his passion and commitment to the field of orthodontics. There was an entire wall of carefully-preserved slides, medical case studies, and x-rays. Dr. Wyatt took out a slide and put it in the projector. The before-and-after pictures sprang to life. Each little box held the story of some child who ended up with a confident, white, straight smile and sparkling eyes. Each child could have ended up with a very different high school experience or life expe-rience. Some of them would have seen an orthodontist, but many of them may not have. For busy parents, it’s another trip, another new face, another medical ordeal. Well worth the hassle, of course. But if their chil-dren can receive orthodontic care from the comfort of their familiar dental home, then treatment is much more likely to happen. The organized beauty of that room was as powerful as Dr. Wyatt’s words, and the perfectly preserved pictures of the kids were startling to me. When Dr. Wyatt projected the first of the film photos on the wall, the high resolution was stunningly clear to someone used to digital photography like me. I got lost in how the kids were looking right at me as if I were back in time with them. It was hard to remember that none of these kids were still kids— they were decades older today. Some of them might be gone by now. All had their lives changed by someone who wouldn’t accept the status quo of dentistry at the time, wouldn’t accept the way things were. Each brown-and-yellow card-board box held another story --and Dr. Wyatt’s room was full of stories. After the archive tour, and after seeing some orthodontic instru-ments and typodonts, Dr. Wyatt invited us to take a tour of the ranch on his side-by-side ATV. I offered my arm going down the steps but was refused. I wondered briefly if I’d offended him. Once at the bottom, Nate, Dr. Wyatt, and I got into the ATV and took off to see 700 acres of woods and river in the middle of a Texas summer. We passed some horse-back riders, jostled around in the little ATV through the woods, crossed the river, and took pictures by the wildflowers. The peacefulness of the ranch tour matched the peace in Dr. Wyatt’s demeanor. Here, I couldn’t help but think, was someone who did what he wanted with his life and was satisfied with his accom-plishments. He had been able to help thousands of patients and dentists (and their patients too) while building a family and raising kids who now follow his example of continuing to learn and never accepting the status quo. The archive, the home, the ranch, the stories, and the look in Dr. Wyatt’s eyes all spoke to a life well lived. I thought about his final interview words as we packed up our equipment and said our good-byes. “I would’ve died with this in my own brain, but it’s out now. It’s all over the world. And people in Afghanistan and all over the world write letters and say, ‘Don't stop.’ And it’s out there, and I can die, but the work is going to live. Well, that's been my passion. I’ll close out with that.” www.orthodontics.com Fall 2023 11
Journal of the American Orthodontic Society Fall 2023: Page 11
