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Twice every week, Fleetwood Brown would make the 45-minute drive.
A senior at Clemson University, Brown was an agriculture main. It was his final semester earlier than commencement, and he already had a job provide in his pocket: working with farmers in Minnesota, instructing them how hydraulic equipment labored. However his coronary heart saved whispering that there was one thing else. So, he listened.
The drive from Clemson to Greenville is simply over 31 miles. Brown is aware of it nicely. It’s a mixture of highways and again roads, a couple of curves and hills right here and there, with loads of farmland alongside the best way, serving as a reminder of what may very well be. Over the course of 12 weeks, he made that drive almost two dozen occasions. And his vacation spot was all the time the identical – his cousin’s dental follow on East North Avenue. However for as a lot as he loved Preston Hamrick’s firm, the visits had been extra than simply household reunions. They had been alternatives for Brown to look at Hamrick work and absorb all he may concerning the subject of dentistry. In any case, he may solely run from future for thus lengthy.
Brown’s household has seen 15 members of the family graduate from the Medical College of South Carolina, to not point out the handful of different family who labored on the College through the years. Spanning greater than a century, they launched applications; ran departments; one, Fitzhugh Hamrick, D.M.D., was even an affiliate dean. Now, as a first-year scholar – and sophistication president – on the Faculty of Dental Drugs, Brown is wanting so as to add to that whole.
With a household custom like that, it appears virtually not possible to assume he would ever do something aside from work in well being care. However proper up till that final semester of undergrad, it appeared a really actual risk.
“Yeah, you’d assume it could have been on my radar, however it actually wasn’t,” he stated. It was an opportunity assembly with some surgeons and a few key recommendation from an uncle that modified the course of his future and opened his thoughts to totally different prospects.
“Once I was a child, all I needed was to be a dentist. However someplace alongside the road I began to assume I didn’t have what it took.” he stated. “I believe I lacked the boldness. However fortunate for me, the fitting individuals caught me on the proper time and satisfied me you solely get one shot, and if I didn’t take it, I would remorse it.”
His household boasts seven College of Dental Medicine graduates, seven College of Medicine graduates and one College of Health Professions grad. Lots of them are nonetheless in follow immediately, each in Charleston and in different elements of South Carolina.
If issues go in response to plan, Brown will graduate in 2026, and the thought of working within the freezing chilly of Minneapolis will solely be a faint reminiscence.
“It’d sound bizarre, however in some methods, the 2 issues – farming and dentistry – aren’t all that totally different. With each, you get to work together with your arms and folks on daily basis. The massive distinction, for me not less than, is that I believe I’ll have the chance to type of pay issues ahead. To provide different individuals that very same self-confidence a handful of dentists gave me as soon as upon a time. And that’s actually thrilling.”
The place he’ll go from there may be nonetheless to be written. Perhaps he’ll transfer throughout the nation. Perhaps he’ll keep in Charleston. Or possibly, he’ll transfer to the Upstate to work along with his cousin at his follow – fittingly, referred to as Heritage Dentistry.
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