When Sadie returned west, she did not go back to her parents’ home in San Bernardino.
She went to San Francisco.
If Boston had given her the idea, San Francisco gave her the battlefield.
The city was restless and alive, full of ambition, medicine, politics, education, and possibility. Sadie found work with William R. Bacon, DDS, who at the time was president of the California State Dental Association. Whether she performed hygiene duties or worked in another capacity is not fully clear, but the tension is unmistakable: she was trained for a profession California had not yet legalized.
Imagine that frustration.
To know what you can do.
To know people need it.
To know children could benefit.
And still to be told: not here, not yet, not legally.
Sadie could have accepted that.
She did not.
Instead, she began pressing forward.
One of the people she lobbied was Guy S. Millberry, DDS, Dean of the Dental School at the University of California. Millberry appears to have shared an interest in public health and saw a role for dental hygienists beyond private dental offices.
In the story of every profession, there are moments when one person opens a door another person has been pushing against for years.
For Sadie, Millberry may have been that door.
The first class of two students entered the California dental hygiene program in 1918. The entrance requirements matched those of the School of Dentistry.
The stated purpose was clear and unapologetic: to train women for public health service and for a “pleasant remunerative vocation.”
A profession had crossed into California.
Quietly...with only two students.
But revolutions often begin in small rooms.
She went to San Francisco.
If Boston had given her the idea, San Francisco gave her the battlefield.
The city was restless and alive, full of ambition, medicine, politics, education, and possibility. Sadie found work with William R. Bacon, DDS, who at the time was president of the California State Dental Association. Whether she performed hygiene duties or worked in another capacity is not fully clear, but the tension is unmistakable: she was trained for a profession California had not yet legalized.
Imagine that frustration.
To know what you can do.
To know people need it.
To know children could benefit.
And still to be told: not here, not yet, not legally.
Sadie could have accepted that.
She did not.
Instead, she began pressing forward.
One of the people she lobbied was Guy S. Millberry, DDS, Dean of the Dental School at the University of California. Millberry appears to have shared an interest in public health and saw a role for dental hygienists beyond private dental offices.
In the story of every profession, there are moments when one person opens a door another person has been pushing against for years.
For Sadie, Millberry may have been that door.
The first class of two students entered the California dental hygiene program in 1918. The entrance requirements matched those of the School of Dentistry.
The stated purpose was clear and unapologetic: to train women for public health service and for a “pleasant remunerative vocation.”
A profession had crossed into California.
Quietly...with only two students.
But revolutions often begin in small rooms.