Oral History Program Dr. Richard Petty Interviewed by Rebecca Ory-Hernandez 17-19 November 2011 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dr. Richard Petty Interviewed by Rebecca Ory-Hernandez 17-19 November 2011 Copyright © 2024 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Community Oral History Collection includes interviews conducted by Weber State University faculty, staff and students, and other members of the community. The interviews cover various topics including city government, diversity, personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Dr. Petty, Richard, an oral history by Rebecca Ory-Hernandez, 17-19 November 2011, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: Dr. Richard Owen Petty was born and raised in Ogden, UT. He is married to Mrs. Joan C. Petty, also of Ogden. Richard attended Ogden High School, Weber College and Dental School at Northwestern in Chicago, IL. He is a recently retired dentist who practiced family dentistry for what he says was “42 wonderful years.” Richard (DOB: March 8, 1942) Petty, sat down with Rebecca Ory Hernandez at his home in St. George November 17-19, 2011 to talk about the rich family history the Petty’s hold in the dental profession’s community of not only Northern Utah, but in Whitefish, Montana. Richard is a third-generation dentist. He also shares stories of his mother, who taught at Weber College in the 1930’s and went on to become the Dean of Students at BYU. Richard’s wife, Joan, is a retired elementary school teacher. ROH: Today we’re in St. George, Utah at the home of Dr. Richard and Joan Petty. Present are Rebecca Ory-Hernandez, Richard Petty, and Joan Petty. We’re here today to talk about Dr. Petty’s father, Dr. Russell B. Petty, and his business with dentistry in northern Utah. I’m going to start by asking your name and where and when you were born. RP: My name is Richard Owen Petty. Owen was my mother’s maiden name. I was born in Ogden, Utah, March 8, 1942. I was the second youngest of eight children. ROH: Why don’t you tell me the list of children? RP: The family is a combined family because my father’s first wife died in childbirth in about 1935. Her name was Josephine Volker. Both mother and baby died. My father had three children at the time. My oldest brother, Robert W. Petty, the next 1 was a girl named Ruth. The third was a four-year-old named Joanne. About three years after that, he married my mother who was then teaching at Weber. My mother had two children and the kids knew each other at school; her two daughters were Elma Lou and Caroline. They combined the two families and then they had three together—an older sister, Louise, myself, and the youngest was Lorraine. ROH: What was your mother’s name? RP: Lucille Owen. She was teaching in the Physical Education Department. She was a graduate of Utah State and she had a Master’s degree from Wisconsin. She ultimately became Dean of Women at Weber. ROH: So tell us a little about your father. RP: My dad was the second child of four boys born to William H. and Annie Beers Petty. Two of the four boys went into dentistry. My father was born March 19, 1901 and I believe he was born in Logan. My grandfather, who was a dentist, trained in Chicago at the Chicago School of Dentistry. My father went to dental school in about 1921, in Chicago at Loyola University. He graduated in 1925 and came back to Ogden where he opened his dental practice. In about 1930, my grandfather moved to Hollywood. He continued his dental practice on Hollywood and Vine. The youngest son, Charles, went to dental school in Michigan and specialized in oral surgery. He conducted his oral surgery practice in Pasadena. ROH: How did your family become interested in dentistry? RP: My grandfather’s brother, A.W. Petty, was also a dentist. My grandfather went to dental school before him and then helped A.W. financially through school. A.W.’s 2 son George also went to dental school. We kind of have a distinction in Utah dentistry that all three—my grandfather, my father, and I—have all served as presidents of the Utah Dental Association. As far as the attraction to dentistry, I don’t know. I know what it was for me. In my growing up years, the father of one of my best friends was an obstetrician and I spent considerable time in their home. I observed a distinct difference in what I would call a quality of life and the relationship between father and son as far as discretionary use of your time. I thought, “The last thing I’d want to do is be in a profession that took me away from home as often as an obstetrician.” That’s not a negative comment on work of obstetricians. In our home, there were often conversations about what my father had done in dentistry that day and how interesting and challenging and satisfying it was when he completed the treatment. As a young person, I spent time in his lab looking at models of teeth. It seemed to interest me. I always did things with my hands—I built things with tinker toys and such. I had a little go-cart and we assembled and disassembled the engine. I was good with my hands. When I got into shop class in high school I’d go to Dad’s office and use his drill to accomplish things that the other guys in the class couldn’t do. So, I had that interest early on. I had pretty much made up my mind in my teenage years that that was what I wanted to do. ROH: Did your father ever talk about why he became a dentist? RP: No, I don’t have a recollection of that at all. ROH: Tell me a little more about your dad’s practice and the history of his practice. 3 RP: He came to Ogden in about 1926. He took several states’ board exams. California, at that time, was extremely political. The year he took the California board, nobody who was not a resident of California passed the exam. When he didn’t pass the exam, he returned to Ogden. I’m sure there were some remnants of my grandfather’s practice that helped him gain recognition. He developed a very successful practice. He started out practicing in the old Eccles Building on the eighth floor. He was, if not the first, then one of the first dentists in Utah to employ a dental hygienist. In 1948, that was new. He was part of the Utah Dental Association committee to draft legislation to license hygienists in the state of Utah. He talked about the value of dental hygienists and how that freed him in his practice to do more dentistry. ROH: Do you think your grandfather spent a lot of time doing what a dental hygienist does today? RP: Yes. It was in the late 1940s when dental hygiene started to be a profession. ROH: Did he talk at home about that? ROH: Yes, he spoke frequently of how wonderful the dental hygienists were in terms of their training and their contribution to the overall well-being of the patients in his practice. The hygienists could take more time and be more efficient, better accomplishing preventative care. ROH: Where is the Eccles Building? RP: It’s where the Hampton Inn is now. That building was occupied by physicians and dentists at that time. It was 1955, along with many other of the downtown professionals who began to abandon the Eccles Building and First Security Bank 4 Building, and build offices more into the outlying areas. My dad built an office on 28th Street and Harrison, kitty-corner from Ogden High School. He practiced there until he finished his career. Now it’s an insurance office. ROH: Did you work with him in his practice? RP: No, he passed away while I was in dental school. But a very significant event in terms of his professional career occurred in 1946. Returning from a trip to Canada, they stayed with the in-laws of my oldest brother who had friends in a small town in northern Montana called Whitefish. My father, in a couple of days of being in Whitefish, thought that it was the most beautiful place he’d ever seen in his life and he set about to find a cabin site on the lake. Without my mother’s company or permission, he found a cabin on the lake and bought it. It caused one of the greatest divisions between my mom and dad that ever occurred in their married life. But over the course of a few years, that went away and Whitefish became Shangiri-La to our family. To the point that my father took the Montana state dental licensing exam, passed it, and got his license. Beginning in about 1950 or 1952, he would close his Ogden office and we would go to Whitefish on about June 1 and come home at the end of August in time for school to start. He established a two-day per week dental practice in Whitefish where he did exclusively oral surgery. He went to local dentists and explained that he was proficient in hospital cases and oral surgery and they wouldn’t have to refer their patients to Spokane or Missoula or some place. He would take care of the patients that needed to have wisdom teeth out or if there were extractions or dentures, he would take care of those patients for them. 5 ROH: How many people lived in Whitefish at that time? RP: There were about 3,500 people. There were other dentists, but none of them did that kind of work. Whitefish was a railroad town, much like Ogden was, on the Great Northern Railroad. The railroad was the main employer; they have a small ski resort and a wonderful golf course. The lake was the major attraction. It was a beautiful lake surrounded by pine-tree covered mountains. From about 1986 to about 1993, we spent our summers there. My mother and sisters, most often times, were my dad’s assistants during the summer. ROH: Tell me some of the things you did while you were there with your dad. ROH: When I was about eight, they took me to play golf for the first time. I believe that the main attraction was finding golf balls out in the woods. That transitioned into more of an appreciation for the game. I played with my mom and dad through the years. I suppose it became boring because I later excelled them in terms of skill and began to play with more proficient players at the course. We had a motorboat and a canoe. We spent considerable time on the lakefront. I learned to run the boat at an early age—I was probably about ten years old. Again, I used my mechanical skills. I learned to fix the throttles and carburetor and other things. It wasn’t too long until we learned to water ski. Every summer the initial chores were to get the boat and the canoe back on the lake. It was about 1958 when we traded the old boat for a new one, which provided superior performance for waterskiing. My mother, in her teaching at Weber College, taught swimming, as well. She taught us to be comfortable in the water at an early age and we absolutely 6 loved our time in the lake. It was a big part of our lives. We also did a lot of sightseeing. We were frequent visitors to Glacier Park. We were there when they built the Hungry Horse Dam, which is a hydro-electric dam. We made annual visits while that was being built. ROH: Were there any other people from Ogden who were going to Whitefish? RP: Kind of an amazing number of people. The sister of Clyde Bueller of the BuellerBingham clothing store—her name was Evelyn. She was married to a gentleman from Salt Lake named Nelson who was originally from Whitefish. We became acquainted with them and they lived across the lake. Ed Anderson, who is the father of Kay Ballif, is a painting contractor in Ogden—they bought a lovely piece of land up the lake from us and we’d see them all summer long. Next door to us was an Empey family—Charles and Nora Empey, who were from Ogden. So there were four or five families from Ogden who also ended up on Whitefish Lake. It was 650 miles—about a 10 or 11 hour drive. ROH: Do you still go to Whitefish? RP: Yes, we’ve been there the last four or five years. We rent a condo across the lake. We sold the place in about 1993 to a family from Newport Beach, California. We still had the cabin when our kids were young and my mother enjoyed going there until she was 88. Over the years we had the place, we enhanced it and made it a lovely and comfortable home, but there were stairs and my mother felt concerned about those stairs. But our kids grew up learning to love the lake and water sports and play golf and those kinds of things. 7 Beginning in the latter-half of the summer when I was 14, I worked on the golf course. Back in those days, there was no automatic sprinkler system. I worked from eight at night to four in the morning watering the golf course. There were outlets a hundred feet apart and you’d screw the sprinkler into the outlet. I pretty well memorized where all the connections were. It was particularly pleasant when there was a full moon. I did that from the time I was fourteen until I was nineteen. I went on my mission and came back and worked for three more years on the golf course, including the first year of our marriage. I didn’t water the course, then, I was like an assistant grounds’ superintendent. At one time, I told my dad, maybe this was what I wanted to do with my life—to be a grounds superintendent. I think maybe he was going to die. But I believe I could have and been happy. ROH: Did anything significant happen during your dad’s dental practice in Whitefish that you can recall that might have influenced you? RP: His practice there was oral surgery and that’s always a little more exciting than day-to-day drilling and filling. ROH: Did you assistant him? RP: No. My only experience there was when I was 14 and I had my impacted cuspids removed—he removed them. Back in those days, the orthodontists weren’t accustomed to pulling them down like they do today. Now, the orthodontists are proficient at taking care of them. 8 I did hear stories and he had a full surgical array of instruments that he could take into the hospital to do his work. People soon learned that he was going to be there in the summer and he was busy. He absolutely loved Whitefish. It was part of who he was. Getting over the hump of the primitiveness of the cabin in those days—we had an outhouse, no indoor plumbing. We eventually transitioned to more of the usual amenities. We had wonderful neighbors who looked forward to us coming. It was a social network on the shore of the lake and we enjoyed the friendships that we developed a great deal. It was kind of a magical childhood experience. ROH: What does it look like today, in comparison? RP: The town has transitioned a great deal. It was a small town where all the high school kids gathered to hang out and have burgers and milkshakes. The railroad has pretty much gone away; it’s still on the mainline of the Great Northern Railroad and it’s still a stop, but it’s mostly freight. The employment from the railroad has diminished. But the evolution of the tourist industry is what has overtaken. The ski resort has developed into a very large enterprise. It’s a big resort called Big Mountain. It employs a lot of people from the town but also from outside. Condos and hotels have expanded. The golf course expanded from nine holes to 36 holes. There’s a private course that’s been built near the ski resort. Whitefish was discovered by Hollywood. Jim Nabors was the first one that we knew about that came to Whitefish and bought a place up on the side of the mountain. 9 I would see Jim Nabors from time to time on the golf course. Then, one by one, other people from Hollywood and people who had a lot of money began to come to Whitefish and build million-dollar homes on the lake. There was a time when Julia Roberts and Keifer Sutherland were an item and they built a home. They sold that home to the man who owns Circus Circus and other Las Vegas property. As the multimillion-dollar homes began to be built around the lake, property taxes escalated and the people who bought places near the golf course on the mountain realized there wasn’t a lot to do after they were done playing golf, so they began to come down and pay exorbitant prices for lakeside property. As you go around the lake today, you see incredibly beautiful lodges. There’s an NFL quarterback who has a place on the lake. Mary Hart of Entertainment Tonight has a multimillion-dollar place. There’re retired executives of corporations. It’s completely different. It’s an environment like Jackson Hole and Park City with the shops and the town that have transitioned from the old haberdashery places where you used to go to get your dishes and clothes have been replaces by boutiques. As long as you don’t have to go into town and you’re on the lake, it’s the same. ROH: What did your dad do with his practice? RP: In 1955, right after he built his new office, he was in a severe auto accident. That reduced his ability to have the energy to continue working. He did continue to work, but as a result of the accident, he had a detached retina and had to take time off for that. He developed a systemic disease called scleroderma, which is a 10 collagen disorder. That led to a diminished ability to work. In about 1965 he sold his practice to a younger man coming into town. It was about that time that my mother was appointed Dean of Women at Brigham Young University, and so they moved to Provo. My dad finished his dental career in Provo as the director of what would, today, be termed the ATC. It was a technical college and he was employed by them to be the director of dental-assisting. ROH: Do you remember the name of the school? RP: No, I don’t. He passed away in 1967. ROH: Your mom moved from Weber State to BYU at that point? RP: She left her employment at Weber College soon after they got married in 1936 or 1937 because she was pregnant and had more family. I think she was employed at Weber from the early 1930s to the late 1930s. That will be in the archives somewhere. She went to BYU in about 1965 and was Dean of Women until about 1971. There’s way more about my mom in terms of education. ROH: We’ll talk more about that. I wanted to capture some of the history of the dental practice in your family. Tell me a little about when you started your practice. RP: I went to Northwestern from 1966 to 1970. Then I had an opportunity to stay an extra year as a resident in the general practice residency at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, which was icing on the cake. There were six general practice residents and six oral surgery residents. It was a major teaching institution and it was a large Jewish hospital. We had training from some of the finest dentists in Chicago. I learned an immense amount, which influenced my practice. 11 When I started my practice, I was far more prepared to deal with the issues of dentistry and it provided a great deal of satisfaction to me that I was able to perform all sorts of things that we hadn’t learned in dental school. I had opportunities to stay in Chicago. I had acquaintances who wanted to recruit me to work for them, but because my family was in Ogden, we made the decision to go home. In looking for an opportunity to go back to Ogden, I happened to find a dentist in Ogden named Cless Pack. His father and my father actually went to dental school together and when I was ready to go back to Ogden, his father was retiring so there was an opening in his practice. Dr. Pack had a busy practice and there was sufficient overflow to allow me to get going. ROH: What year did you come back to Ogden? RP: In the summer of 1971. Dr. Pack and I were together for about eight years and we had formed a corporation and we had some disagreement and separated that corporation even though we practiced under the same roof, we practiced separately after that time. ROH: What was your specialty? RP: General dentistry, for lack of a better word. It was general, restorative, and surgical. ROH: Where was the office? RP: It was in the Eccles Building. Dr. Pack’s office is one of the few remaining dental practices downtown. It was in 1975 that we purchased a piece of ground in South Ogden on Adams Avenue and Highway 89. I continued my practice there until 2006. The young dentist that I sold my practice to in 2004 decided to build a new 12 facility and we built a new building about three blocks to the south, near Ogden Regional Medical Center. I sold the practice to Michael L. Crowton and I continue my dentistry as his employee until the present time. ROH: Are there some stories you can share about how dental practice has changed from the time you went to school to the practice now? Tell me a little about changes that you’ve seen over time. RP: Fortunately, dentistry is full of ongoing education opportunities. Locally, with our Weber district and I belong to a study group that my father was instrumental in starting with several other dentists. It’s a group of about eighteen of us who meet monthly to review and discuss a current topic in dentistry. I’ve learned a great deal with that group. It was always made up of outstanding dentists. Don Buzzwell was a part of that and I joined the group in about 1975. Our state dental association had an annual dental convention and brought in speakers on the current topics to the national meeting. We could meet and have a full agenda of lectures from experts in the field. That continues today. It’s where we gain our continuing education and updating on procedures and techniques that are great advances in dentistry. The real changes in dentistry is that in today’s world dentistry has transitioned from meeting patients’ needs, which we still do, but there is a great deal of dentistry being done today for patients’ wants. The cosmetic aspects of dental service have grown. ROH: When did you see that shift? 13 RP: I would say probably in the mid-80s and the early 90s. The technology of porcelain began to really take shape. They were using resin before. In dental school, I did very little porcelain; anything in the anterior was resin and in the posterior was gold. Gold is still the standard, but nobody wants it and the cost of gold has sky-rocketed. Everyone in today’s world kind of wants white. So resins have developed in a positive direction in terms of the technique. The technique to place resins has become much more technical, to their durability and serviceability. That has improved a great deal and probably dominates the restorative work that we do today. It’s very good material. Silver amalgam that we used to use to restore most teeth with is scientifically as sound as it ever was. It’s a very safe and reliable, cost-effective material that has been studied probably as much as any other aspect of dentistry and has been proven effective and useful. In fact, an article in our American Dental Association news laments the fact that dental schools are not training young dentists so much in the placement of amalgams. It’s dying a political and social death; not for any scientific causes. There are certain places in the mouth where I can’t imagine not using silver amalgam for an effective procedure that will provide longevity. The young dentists, unfortunately, are not up to speed any more with placing silver amalgam. ROH: You’ve created a scholarship in your parents’ name at Weber State. Tell me a little about the rationale behind that. RP: When my father died, life continued on as normal as can be with Mother being the matriarch. When Mom died, the siblings gathered and I suggested that when 14 we sold the Montana property, we use $5,000 of that as seed money to form a scholarship in Mom and Dad’s name in the Weber State dental hygiene program. I supplemented that over the years. Even though my other siblings thought that was a great idea, none of them have added to it. That is a supplement to a hygiene student that the faculty think is deserving. ROH: Why is that important to you? RP: It was important because of my father’s early involvement with the development of dental hygiene in Utah. He was constantly vocalizing his appreciation of the contribution dental hygienists were making to the profession of dentistry. I had, like I say, several sisters who did dental assisting but nobody pursued a dental hygiene career. I have a daughter who started to pursue a dental career and changed to radiology. One of my dad’s formal dental assistants went into dental hygiene and ultimately became the department chair at USC. She was an outstanding young woman. I’m sure my father heavily influenced her. Her name was Adele; she married a Hollywood guy and they moved to St. George in their later years. I met her and visited with her before she passed away. ROH: Through the scholarship, you’ve helped a lot of hygiene students and they’ve all done very well. It’s nice to have a history of how this came to be. RP: And over the years, we’ve employed a great number of wonderful young women who graduated in the WSU dental hygiene program. [Day Two of the Interview] ROH: We are with Dr. Petty, recapping Mexico, on November 18, 2011 in St. George. 15 RP: In 1996, I had the opportunity to accompany Dr. Phil Hale who had been going to this facility in Mexico which was operated by a group out of Southern California that was called Flying Doctors of Mercy. We flew to San Diego and then by private plane we flew about seven hundred miles to Sinaloa, Mexico. This organization operated three clinics within about 100-mile radius. The largest and busiest was in San Blas. When I arrived there with instruments and materials that I anticipated I would have need for—mostly surgical things—I found a room with two old dental chairs, no vacuum and no compressed air, and an army field unit drill that I could plug in the wall and use to clean out cavities and decayed teeth. I used materials that were probably similar to what the Army would use in the field for emergency care. I extracted lots of teeth. With no vacuum and no assistants, it was a very difficult experience. I knew that I could make that a better place, so over the next two or three years I included a dental hygienist in that trip—her name was Reneè Jensen. Her husband also accompanied us because he was a fluent Spanish speaker. Being a member of the Pierre Fachard Academy, I knew there were grant opportunities available. I applied for and received a $10,000 grant and we equipped the room with compressed air and vacuum; we added another chair to work from. Occasionally another dentist would come and with three of us working we ended up being the busiest part of the clinic. In that clinic, over a period of two and a half days, there would be between 6 and 700 patients in the facility—about 100 would come to our room in the clinic and we’d provide dental services. People 16 knew we were coming and we were going twice a year, in May and November. We made a total of 33 trips to that clinic. ROH: Are you still making those trips? RP: No. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Sinaloa drug cartel, but we were right in the middle of Sinaloa. There was a perceived danger of going into Sinaloa in the private airplane. In the last trip I made, there were 26 private planes sitting in the airport where we landed that were guarded by supposed military personnel. I lost a little confidence in who was guarding what. Even though the clinic continues to operate, medical people continue to go. In addition to the grant that I got, I created an opportunity for patients. If they wanted a tax write-off on having a crown down, I would provide the crown if they would write the check to a charitable trust that I set up called Changing Lives. That was basically how I funded the trips. During the year, if five or six patients would avail themselves of the opportunity. Some other people heard what I was doing and Suzanne Lindquist gave me a donation almost every year. So I was able to fund the transportation and the supplies and other things that I needed. I had a retired Delta pilot named Bob Adams who also would give me $500 to $1,000 a year. It made the project work. That’s been one of the outstanding dental experiences of my life. Another organization that I became a part of was the American Association of Dental Consultants. It’s an organization that deals with the dental insurance industry in monitoring and reviewing insurance claims from dental offices. It has provided a great deal of educational experience for me and also 17 insight into the trends of dentistry and what the dentists around the nation are doing. I review dental insurance claims one day a week for a company in Salt Lake. ROH: Is there anything interesting that you see that you can talk about or is it confidential? RP: It’s pretty confidential. ROH: What are the claims for? RP: They are claims for procedures done on patients. One of the things that led me into that was work with a former dental school classmate who was also in that industry. We co-authored a book called The ABCs of Dental Reimbursement. In it, we provided guidelines to have the property use the codes—every dental procedure has a code. Also, how to utilize medical insurance in dental circumstances when there’s a medical component to the treatment of the patient—trauma, disease that affects teeth and jaws, things that can legitimately be tied to a medical condition. That work led me into the work with the American Association of Dental Consultants. That’s been a valuable experience to me. ROH: Are you also reviewing for fraud? RP: Yes, reviewing for fraud and abuse, inappropriate treatment, which we unfortunately see to a fair degree. ROH: When you first started, was there dental insurance? RP: Very little. Delta Dental was really the first insurance that I was exposed to in the early 1970s. ROH: So with your dad and your grandfather, people would just pay? 18 RP: Yes, it was fee for services. When they couldn’t pay, my dad had a credit system that allowed people to pay over time. I’m sure there was a fair amount of giveaways. ROH: Was there trade for services? RP: I’m sure that there was. I’m not sure if it was chicken and eggs. It continues today. I’ve had opportunities to trade services for a variety of things. One example is art. I’ve traded dental services for fine art and I have been really blessed by that. Joan and I have collected works by primarily local artists of prominence. Tom Leek is a name that the Art Department people will recognize. In fact, I believe he was director of the Fine Arts at Weber for a while. We have probably five or six of his pieces, which would have considerable value today. We had a wonderful relationship with the family that owns Gray Cliff Lodge. We could go up and have dinner and put it on their tab and they would come to the office and we’d match it. We’ve enjoyed that for probably the last 30 years. [Day Three of Interview] ROH: Today is November 19, 2011 and we are in the home of Dr. Richard and Joan Petty. Present are Rebecca Ory-Hernandez, Dr. Petty, and Joan Petty. We’re going to continue Dr. Petty’s oral history today. Why don’t we start with you telling me your name and where and when you were born? RP: My name is Richard Owen Petty; Owen was my mother’s maiden name. I was born in Ogden, Utah, March 8, 1942. I was the second youngest of eight children. It was a combined family. ROH: Where were you born? 19 RP: In the old Dee Hospital on Harrison and 24th Street. ROH: What was going on in the world when you were born? RP: The Second World War was going on in Europe and the Pacific. My father being in the medical profession, he was not drafted, but he was too old—he was 41. My mother was 38. The family was moving residence at the time I was born. They lived down on Jackson and 25th Street. My oldest brother, Bob, was in high school, then there were five girls, then me. After five girls, I was rather spoiled as a baby. ROH: What did your parents do for a living? RP: My father was a dentist and my mother was in education. She completed college with a degree in physical education and became Dean of Women at the old campus down on 25th Street and Jefferson. ROH: Tell me some of your early memories from childhood. RP: My earliest memories were mostly of playing with neighbor kids. We were very active kids and spent a lot of time outdoors. Across the street from us was an Eccles family. He was the manager of the Ben Lomond Hotel and had the first Corvette in town in about 1955. Campbell Eccles was his name. Next door to them was the Mortonson family; the father was the manager of the Ogden Airport. They had a bunch of girls. Up the street was another family that had boys but they were a little older than I was. Around the corner was Val Johnson, who was one of my childhood friends. Dr. Bruce Hanly in the Business School was one of my friends in elementary school. I had a friend named Jack Hergowitz whose family owned a furniture store in Ogden. 20 I had a pretty large group of friends that we palled around with. We played a lot of games together. Marbles was really popular and if I was a good boy at home and at school I’d get to go down to Armstrong’s or the sporting goods store and buy a new flint marble. I still have those. Some of those marbles were my grandparent’s. We lived near where we went to school and we had access to the playground so we played a lot over there. When we were in the fourth grade, my friend Dr. Bruce Hannelly and I went down in my basement where my mother had been doing some canning and there was a pot of paraffin wax. We heated up the pot and very carefully we dipped our hands in the paraffin and then in cold water until we had our hands covered in paraffin up to our wrists. Then we gently slid our hands out and took that mold to my father’s office where we covered the mold in plaster. We took the plaster hands to show and tell. Our fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Williams, put those model hands in her science cabinet. ROH: What was it like living in Ogden at that time? RP: Ogden was a fun town. It had many stores and restaurants downtown that were quite renowned. There was a bus stop across the street from us and for a nickel or dime we could go downtown and go to the kiddie show. It was a safe place. We were free to roam. We enjoyed those Saturdays. ROH: How young were you? RP: I was probably seven or eight years old. When I was in about the third grade, my mother was on the Ogden City school board. She would have to attend meetings out of town—Atlantic City seemed to be the place where they would often go. 21 They would bring back barrels full of salt water taffy. I would take that to school for show and tell and then share the taffy with the class. My mother remained on the board for many years, and then she was on the state school board for many years. About when I was in high school, she was appointed to the Utah State University Board of Trustees. She was presented with a “Man of the Year” award from Governor Clyde. ROH: Tell me her name again. RP: Her name was Lucille. She graduated from Utah State and then got a Master’s degree from Wisconsin. That was in about 1958. I remember going down to a dinner in Salt Lake where she was presented with this award. It was a parallel career. My father was president of the Utah Dental Association in about 1955 or 1956, and my mother was very involved in the community. It brought her into association with many community leaders of the time. We kind of adopted an immigrant from Belgium when I was in the third grade. She was a convert to the LDS church and came over. Her name was Jean Cypers. Because my mother was busy and out of the house all the time, Jean came into our home two or three days a week to help with household duties. She made incredible French fries. She remained a very close friend of our family. For 20 years she attended weddings and special events with us. She was a very dear part of our lives. She had some other relatives in town; I think they were in the painting business. ROH: Were all the children close with her? Did she take you places? 22 RP: She didn’t drive. At that time, there were just three kids at home: my younger sister Lorraine and my older sister Louise. All the other kids were either married or away at school. We went to Polk Elementary, then Lewis Junior High and Ogden High School. When I was about 14, my dad built his new office on 28th and Harrison. I started to work there in the evenings as a custodian. One night in the spring we had the radio on while we were cleaning—oftentimes Val Johnson would come over and help—and they announced on KLO that Lewis Junior High School was burning down. That was on 28th and Washington Boulevard. We ran outside and we could see the flames. I locked up the office and we ran from Harrison to Washington Boulevard and watched Lewis Junior High burn to the ground. That was a really tragic scene. We stood by some of the teachers who had taught there for many years and who lost all their teaching materials. I don’t know that they ever determined the cause of the fire. They replaced the junior high with an elementary school and they put the students from Lewis on the upper floor of Ogden High School. From about the end of my eighth-grade year I went to Ogden High. The students in the high school didn’t really like the younger kids running around their school, but we participated with Ogden High assembles and lunches. It was a whole new experience. ROH: What happened to the teachers from Lewis? Did they move over to Ogden High with you? RP: Yes. All the teachers and faculty moved over to the third floor of Ogden High. That eventually led to the construction of Mount Ogden Junior High School. 23 Val Johnson and I had a little go-cart. We learned to take the engine apart and put it together. We learned about centrifugal clutches and everything. We would ride that thing all over the east bench. Looking back, that was dangerous, but we’d take that and go play. ROH: Did you make it from scratch? RP: No, we bought it for something like 10 bucks. We modified it over the years. We learned a lot from it and it gave us mechanical experience. We used to go up and play in Mount Ogden Park and got into the archery course there. Then we got into making bombs and creative chemistry. I don’t know how my father ever did this, but he got a bottle of potassium chloride for us and we used to mix potassium chloride, charcoal, and sulfur together and put it in conduit pipe and crimp the ends. We made our own fuses. We’d take them over to Ogden High parking area and light the bombs. It made an incredible, reverberating explosion. But somebody else on the East Bench was also making bombs but they were more criminal—they were putting them in the mailboxes. We quit making bombs and turned our attention to making rockets and rocket packs. ROH: What did your teachers do about you making bombs? RP: We looked around to make sure nobody was around when we lit the bomb. All we wanted to do was make a big bang. I was mixing chemicals together in the basement with a mortar and pestle and it singed my eyebrows and my hair, when it ignited. It was actually an extremely dangerous chemical. I think my dad was ignorant of what we were doing with it. ROH: Did you ask him for it? 24 RP: Yes. I knew someone else who knew the formula. The sulfur and charcoal were easy to get, but the potassium chloride was tougher. Dad was busy in his practice and Mom was busy with school stuff and we didn’t do anything criminal. Looking back, there was some danger, but it was just monkey business. ROH: What kind of grades were you getting in chemistry? RP: I don’t remember. I was probably about a ‘B’ student in high school. I liked school and had a really good time. I loved the whole scene. We’ve talked about Whitefish—from the day I picked up my report card until the end of summer, I was gone. I had no association with anyone from school during the entire summer. Whitefish was a whole difference experience in terms of activity and childhood things you learned along the way. We’d play in the wood and shoot old stumps and squirrels—which I regret to this day. We had a canoe and a boat; I learned to fly fish down on the dock. We had no TV, so we learned to entertain ourselves. ROH: Did you have electricity? You mentioned that there was an outhouse there when you first started going. RP: It was about 1952 when, over the winter, we had a contractor redo the house. It was originally one large room with a wood-burning stove and a screened-in sleeping porch. He came in and screen off the porch, which was the bedroom for Mom and Dad, then he put two bedrooms upstairs—those had bunk beds. He put in a bathroom with a shower and a little U-shaped kitchen and an oil-burning stove and an electric range and a fridge. Over the years, we added a deck and built rock walls and pathways. 25 The in-laws of my oldest brother had been a Safeway regional manager and he acquired a very large walk-in freezer that was maybe 10-by-20. They disassembled it and shipped it; we attached it to the house as a bedroom. We cut two big holes for windows and it became a guest bedroom. It was insulated to the max and was a lovely room to sleep in because it was so quiet. We put a spiral staircase in the house to connect it all together. So the house was very comfortable and convenient. Our water supply was the lake. People tested the water frequently and we had a pump. It was wonderful water. ROH: Did you have friends there that were your age? RP: The friendships with people up there probably started when I was maybe twelve. There was a boy named Tommy England who lived up the road. He had a pony and he was kind of an adventurous guy. Unfortunately, he lost his life in Vietnam. We used to ride that horse or use it to pack stuff and go up in the mountain behind Whitefish called Lion Mountain. We made birch bark huts and stayed overnight at a camp we had up there. When I started to play golf, I acquired more friends on the golf course. We were all pretty competitive and we played in tournaments together. Then I started working on the golf course. I couldn’t have had a better job. I worked at night and played golf in the daytime. From the time I was fourteen until I was nineteen and went on my LDS mission, I played a lot of golf. ROH: Did your entire family go? RP: There were just the three kids at home. We had visits now and again from the older siblings, but most of the time it was just Mom and Dad and the three kids. 26 My sister Louise, who is just older than me, met her spouse up there. He was from Twin Falls and his family was up visiting and it was love at first sight. He was a little older than she was by about four or five years. He had been a BYU student and was going on a mission; she was still in high school. But from the very first moment it was a match made in heaven. My younger sister, Lorraine, married a young man from Whitefish. So there’s lots of connection between Whitefish and our family. ROH: So does she still live in Whitefish? RP: She did for quite a long time. Now they live in Oregon. ROH: You mentioned scouting earlier. When did you do that? RP: My scouting experience was mainly from September to May in Ogden. Virtually no scouting experience in Whitefish. ROH: How old were you when you were doing scouting? RP: I was 12—probably between 12 and 14. I did not achieve the rank of Eagle Scout. It was more circumstance than anything. I wasn’t around in the summer when the Scouts do all their stuff. But the skills and so forth that were part of scouting, I learned on my own. I learned camping and woodwork and fire and all kinds of things—I had the opportunity because of where we lived in Whitefish. ROH: What about sports? RP: I played junior high baseball and junior high basketball. I thought about maybe doing some sports in high school, but when I got to high school and I saw how big some of the people had gotten…I thought, “No, I’m not doing this.” But I played on Ogden High’s golf team for three years and lettered in golf. 27 ROH: What are some of the other activities you did in school—besides play golf and make bombs? Were you in any other clubs? RP: I was into cars. When I turned 16, I got a car that was a ’65 Chevy convertible, which was to-die-for. I had that car until my first year of college. I sold that and bought a 1957 Plymouth. When I was 16, I started to work at Hugh Market which was over on 26th Street, just above Harrison. It was a neighborhood market. The owner of the store belonged to the Ogden Country Club and he had a clientele of families that belonged to the country club and he delivered groceries. We would take phone orders and I delivered groceries to the Eccles family and the Hemingways. To the Dee family. They, of course, came into the store often. So I had a casual acquaintance with many of the people who were prominent in Ogden at that time. Hugh had a reputation of being a great meat-cutter and people would come in to buy their meat there. ROH: Is it still there? RP: It is, but it’s a coffee place now. Working at the store, of course, I developed friendships with people who worked at the store. That was a great experience. I dated a fair number of girls through high school and in Whitefish. One was from Philadelphia; she used to appear on American Bandstand once in a while. Her mother and stepfather lived in Whitefish and so she came in summertime. She enjoyed playing golf. She ended up marrying a boy from Whitefish and still lives there. Then I dated a girl who was the daughter of a one of my golfing buddies. His name was Ozzie Schmechel. He was an engineer on the Great Northern Railroad and he was one of the truly great characters of my acquaintanceship. 28 He was truly a great friend; he had a sense of humor and a presence about him. His daughter, Randy, was a popular girl at Whitefish. She was a carhop at the local drive-in. we wrote to each other in the winter time and for about two summers we dated up there. Then, when I was 19, I went on my LDS mission to England. ROH: Let’s back up. Did you start at Weber before? RP: Yes, I started at Weber in the fall of 1960. ROH: Why did you choose Weber?” RP: I felt like the first year of college I would stay home. I had lots of friends who were staying at home and going to Weber. That was a marvelous and fun year. I pledged the Excelsior club, along with many of my high school friends. We enjoyed that association and the social part of that. Joan and I had not dated at that point. During that year, one by one, most of my friends went on their missions. I was the last one to go because I wanted one more year in Whitefish. I left in November of 1961. ROH: And where did you go? RP: The mission was called the Central British Mission. It included South Whales and the Midlands. Birmingham was in the center of our mission. The mission home was in kind of a suburb of Birmingham. I really loved and cherished every minute of my two years there. I learned to love English fish and chips—English fish and chips have no competitor in the United States that I have ever found. And it was cheap—it was about thirty-five cents. I had a lot of great companions and friends in those two years. We came home from England on the Queen Mary—one of 29 the final voyages of the Queen Mary. That was really fun. It was a marvelous five-day voyage. ROH: You didn’t fly? RP: We flew to England. We had a choice for how we would come home—we could fly or come by boat. We chose the boat. It was interesting because there were two or three other missionaries on the boat that I knew from high school who were coming home from their missions. Myself and a missionary friend bought a rail pass and we spent the night times on the train and the days in some city. We went from London to Holland, then north to Sweden and Norway and Denmark, then south to Germany and France and Italy. We spent Thanksgiving in Nice. We were in Rome when JFK was shot. We learned of the assassination from a TWA pilot who was on the same bus with us. ROH: Do you recall your reaction to that? RP: It was an incredible shock and a disappointment. We were equally disappointed in the Italian reaction. They were critical of the Wild West and cowboy mentality and guns. We thought, being Catholic, that there would be far great sympathy. The initial response was one of criticism and ridicule of American when he was assassinated. So it was a very troubling way to end our tour in Europe. We discovered an A & W root beer stand in Heidelberg, which we visited twice as we passed through—we detoured our trip so we could go. It was a marvelous trip. I really have very little desire to go back to Europe and see or do anything—except perhaps Norway, where my oldest son served 30 his mission, which is an incredibly beautiful place. But I have no desire to go back and see France or Italy or any of those places. When I came home, it was a time when my mother was on the board of trustees at Utah State and she got basketball tickets at Utah State. I dated a few freshman girls and after a while I thought, “Why am I hanging around with these youngsters?” It was about that time that one of my friends, also a returned missionary, called and asked if I’d go on a double date. He said, “I’ve got you lined up with Joan Clark.” I said, “Joan Clark? I thought she’d be married.” So that’s when we had our first date. ROH: When was this? RP: January of 1964. It came pretty clear to me on that first date that this was it. I had the distinct impression that she was what I was looking for. She’d just finished up her time at Weber and went up to Utah State for a year where she was active on the campus. She came home to work for a year. Her major was elementary education. We began to date and fell in love. It was the following summer, in August, when her family came to visit us in Whitefish, that on a moon-lit night I picked her up and took her to the 13th t-box where we could see the moon come up over the mountains of Glacier Park. I presented her with a diamond and asked her to marry me. After that summer, we went back home and she re-enrolled at Weber State. RP: She was completing her bachelor’s and I was completing my pre-dental requirements. We got married on March 19, 1965. 31 ROH: Where did you get married? RP: We got married in the Salt Lake Temple. Harold B. Lee was one of the senior apostles at the time and he married us. RP: We’d had some connection with him over the years. My mother was a first cousin to Ezra Taft Benson. When we were in Whitefish, we often had church visitors from Utah. Ernie Wilkinson, president of BYU was there; Harold B. Lee was there. Our first apartment was a stone’s throw from the parking lot of the football stadium on Mount Ogden Drive. That little apartment was wonderful—I could walk to school and walk home for lunch. Joan’s first teaching job was in Davis County, so she commuted down to Oak Hills Elementary. She taught the remainder of the year there. I had one more year of undergrad requirements, and then Joan transferred up and taught at Hilltop Elementary. I was accepted at Northwestern University in Chicago. We towed a U-Haul to Chicago, where we found a lovely little apartment in the Western suburb of Burwin, about 15 miles west of downtown Chicago. Joan was hired to teach school—third grade or fourth grade? JP: Third first, then second. RP: At Piper Elementary. There were a handful of Northwestern students who lived out west. Most of the students who were in our ward were students at Loyola University. Dental school was kind of an eight to five program, so we were in school all day. ROH: Was it rigorous? 32 RP: Yes, it was rigorous. In grad school, you have to figure out when you study and how you fit that in with marriage and home life. ROH: So, undergrad requirements at Weber. You thought you were done with all the nonsense of studying really hard. RP: Yes, and it was a giant leap from undergraduate to dental school in terms of required time to study. I learned after that first quarter that I had to put far more time in than what I had been putting in. When I would come in the evening around 6:00, Joan and I would have dinner and then I’d take a nap from about 7:00 to 9:30, then I would get up and study from then until about 3:00 in the morning. Then I’d go to bed and get two or three hours of sleep. I found that that worked. For the remainder of dental school, that was my routine. Once you get passed the basic science courses and get into the clinical, that was where I excelled. I was pretty handy with my hands and my vision of what needed to happen. In the clinical setting, I did very well. ROH: Why did you like that part better? RP: It produced something tangible. It was something where you envisioned what needed to be done and you could see the product of your work. You could see what you needed to improve on and what was satisfactory. I ended up doing some work for some of the professors—making their crowns and bridges and so forth. ROH: Was that typical? RP: No. Because of the work I did in the clinic, they saw my work and asked me to do some of their castings. In my junior year of dental school, I had a ruptured disc in 33 my back. I had a lumbar laminectomy surgical procedure done. It kept me out of school for about eight weeks and I had to do a lot of catch-up. I was able to stay abreast of the didactic courses. In my senior year I caught up and completed all my courses. At that time, I thought to myself that four years of dental school was really inadequate to turn me lose in the public sector. I thought of a military career; I took the physical and while I was in line, the doctor saw the scar on my back and said, “What was that?” I told him and he said, “You’re exempt.” So I began to investigate and apply for a hospital general practice residency. I was accepted into the program at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, which was a premier program. That was maybe the most important launching point for my dental career. In the hospital, I was exposed to some of the best clinicians in Chicago. I assisted them and they taught us how to make the transition from dental school into the private practice. Sometimes the dental school application of principles were great things to learn, but the transition to private practice there were things that were far more efficient in private practice than in dental school. So I came out of that residency pretty comfortable and confident in my ability to treat patients. During that year, Joan and I had our first child. We had to move onto the campus of the hospital. Our apartment was on the 18th floor of a high rise with a beautiful view of Lake Michigan. We had a marvelous experience that year. 34 ROH: Tell me the story that Joan had mentioned. You were studying with the anatomy course. RP: In our gross anatomy course we were given a little bag of human bones that were treated and preserved and we had to learn the nitty-gritty of the anatomy of the bones. We were able to take that bag home with us and on one occasion, I came home from school to find that our little Doxen dog had gnawed the end off of the humorous. It was embarrassing to take that bag back to school and explain to the professor what had happened. The humor of the situation pretty well overcame the down-side. ROH: So you had your first child during your junior year or was this your senior year? RP: This was the year of my residency. We kind of thought that we would start our family more in the junior or senior year, but the pregnancy never occurred. ROH: You had such a rigorous academic time with studying and clinicals—what was that like for the two of you? JP: I spent a lot of time with the dog. ROH: You’re trying to balance of these things—how’d you do it? RP: Looking back on it, it was really a marvelous time in our married life. Joan had a great experience in the school where she taught. We had dental students that we socialized with on weekends. It got to be routine where I’d go take a nap after dinner and she’d do her school work and correct papers. It got into a routine. We had great times on weekends. We took advantage of the city and saw some of the sites of Chicago. ROH: Did you participate in the St. Patty’s Day parade? 35 RP: Joan did. I don’t think I ever went down to the parade. Dental school was one block east of Michigan Avenue, right in downtown Chicago. We had opportunities to be downtown and found some favorite restaurants that we ate at. The suburb where we lived was referred to as a bohemian neighborhood. There were lots of Czechoslovakians and Romanians and Polish and Italians. We had delightful neighbors. Our landlord was Italian and we became very good friends with them. ROH: You had been on your mission, so you had traveled in Europe already. Were you surprised or was there any great contrast to your growing up life in Ogden to Chicago—any noticeable differences? RP: We enjoyed the diversity of the people in our area. Joan had kids in her class that came from a variety of backgrounds. She mostly, but sometimes the two of us together, attended things that were a part of their culture, either in their church or in their social activities. We appreciated the difference in culture. ROH: What about the pace? RP: The pace of life? We had our own routines. The routine of life was probably very much the same. JP: We were there for the Chicago riots and they were throwing stuff. RP: For the Democratic Convention riots. JP: We were there when they had the snowstorm in 68 that immobilized the city for several days. ROH: Were you in Chicago when you had your second child? RP: No, we were in Ogden. ROH: How did you finish out your time in Chicago? 36 RP: After Joan had the baby, our first child Michael, that was April 25, and my residency was scheduled to finish at the end of June. We came home with Joan and the baby in early June and then I went back to finish my residency and made arrangements for movers to take our furnishings back to Ogden. At that time, we purchased a home. JP: We lived with my mom and dad. RP: Until we found a home. But we had that home ready to move into when I returned to Ogden. ROH: Where did you move? What was your address? RP: It was 4774 Brinker Avenue. ROH: Well thank you for taking the time to talk to me today about your education and dental school. 37