Pearl Sabat, now age 84, is happy to call herself a “Forsyth Kid.” She qualifies for that title because from 1925 through 1929, Pearl took the bus twice a week from the Benedict Fenwick School in Roxbury to the Forsyth Clinic for work on her teeth. It was not a matter of cavities alone: “my teeth were marshmallow fluff,” she explains.

I talked with this lively woman at a celebration held at Forsyth for a large number of “kids” who received dental treatment sometime between the 1920s and the 1960s at this famous clinic located in the Fenway section of Boston. Founded in 1910, it was known for several decades as the Forsyth Dental Clinic for Children. In the 1950s it shifted emphasis to research and became affiliated with the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

In 1999, they changed their name to The Forsyth Institute, in keeping with a greatly expanded research agenda. A striking example of this research came just two weeks ago when Forsyth announced development of a new vaccine that could be sprayed into the noses of young children and protect them against cavities for their whole lives.

During the last few months, Forsyth has been searching for the former children who were its patients, in order to enlist their support for a new campaign to improve the dental health of current children. The kids who received dental care decades ago tend to live in Boston’s suburbs now, in circumstances dramatically different from the poverty in which they grew up.

Another kid, Ralph Shuman, went to Boston public schools located in his neighborhood of Mattapan. Not without emotion, this 68 year old, recalls going to Forsyth starting in 1943. “Every time I go by Huntington Avenue, I remember those days.” Some of the details, such as the people in white coats and the needles, stay fixed in his memory. So does walking into the clinic: “Oh, boy, I sure do remember the turnstile.” Like other old timers, he recalls having to push a nickel into the turnstile at the entrance to the clinic.

Their families were mostly poor, struggling because of the Depression , and glad to have their children treated for problems with their teeth. Often the kids themselves did not know they were poor because everyone else in their neighborhood was in the same situation.

Among the kids who received dental care at Forsyth are Thomas Menino, mayor of Boston; Kevin Fitzgerald, state legislator from the Mission Hill area; and John Harrington, president of the Red Sox, and his wife Maureen Harrington.

To receive care a child did not have to be enrolled in a public school; parochial school students were included. Donald Hann was a pupil at St. Patrick’s school in Watertown when he came for treatment in 1929. Coming with one of his parents, he would get off public transportation at the old Boston Opera House and walk to Forsyth. He remembers the fillings and instruction in the use of a tooth brush. His sweetest memory, however, was going over to the Museum of Fine Arts after the dentistry.

Roman Micciche serves now as vice-chair of the Forsyth board of trustees. In the late 1940s he came to Forsyth on a bus from St. Joseph’s School in Medford. One of the nuns would accompany the kids to preserve good order. About being in the dental chair, he claims to be now “too old to remember the pain.”

During the formal program at the recent festivities, the Forsyth CEO, Dr. Dominick DePaola, emphasized that dental care involves much more than filling cavities. Dentists also respond to infections which can turn deadly and they deal with oral cancer as well as birth defects. These threats to good health need intensive care, something that Forsyth pledges to provide to the low-income children of Boston.  

In his judgment, the best people to spread the word about children’s dental health care needs are the Forsyte kids and their families. He wants them to become “ambassadors of oral health,” spreading the word wherever they go.

When I commented on the rich sugary deserts served at the reunion and  asked Dr. DePaola whether a statute of limitations on such food was in force, he playfully answered, “For these kids, it’s not a problem.” And, indeed, no one among them mentioned the candy of their youthful years.

If you look at the current situation of our nation’s children, the statistics might make you think of the most deprived countries on earth. Nearly one-third of American children have little or zero access to oral health care; among the states, Massachusetts ranks a shocking thirty-fifth. Up to 48 percent of the children living in Boston, Cambridge, and Lawrence need restorative dental care. At one Boston high school, students have four times as many cavities as the national average.

If you are one of the half million Forsyth kids but missed the reunion, the institute would still like to hear from you and get you involved in its children’s oral health campaign. The number to call is (617) 456-7733.  

Richard Griffin