Sadie’s life did not become easier after the early victories. By 1923, her position with the Department of Health was eliminated in a Governor’s
budget cut. The detail is painfully familiar even a century later.
Programs are praised until money tightens.
Public health is admired until budgets are negotiated.
Prevention is celebrated until it must be funded.
Sadie lost the role that had placed her at the center of California’s public health dental hygiene movement. But again, she did not disappear. In 1924, she entered dental school at UCSF. She graduated in 1929 at the age of thirty-two. She opened a private practice, worked at the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum, and continued to support the professional organization she had helped build.
She became Chair of the UCSF Dental Hygiene Department in 1944. By then, she was no longer only a pioneer. She was an institution. A woman who had seen dental hygiene grow from an uncertain idea into a licensed California profession.
Then, in January 1948, at only forty-eight years old, Sadie was found dead. There was no cause listed on her death certificate. Notes reportedly found in her apartment suggested, but did not confirm, suicide.
We should be careful here.
The dead deserve dignity. Mystery should not be turned into spectacle.
But grief belongs in the story.
Because Sadie’s ending asks us to sit with the cost of carrying a profession before the profession is strong enough to carry you back.
What burdens did she hold?
What battles had exhausted her?
What loneliness comes with being first?
We do not know.
What we do know is that after Sadie, others had to step forward.
One of them was March Fong, who replaced her as Director of Dental Hygiene and would later become ADHA President and eventually, as March Fong Eu, California’s Secretary of State.
The founding mother was gone.
But the profession she helped build was still alive.
And it was about to enter a much larger fight.
GO TO NEXT: Chapter 6 - A House Divided
budget cut. The detail is painfully familiar even a century later.
Programs are praised until money tightens.
Public health is admired until budgets are negotiated.
Prevention is celebrated until it must be funded.
Sadie lost the role that had placed her at the center of California’s public health dental hygiene movement. But again, she did not disappear. In 1924, she entered dental school at UCSF. She graduated in 1929 at the age of thirty-two. She opened a private practice, worked at the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum, and continued to support the professional organization she had helped build.
She became Chair of the UCSF Dental Hygiene Department in 1944. By then, she was no longer only a pioneer. She was an institution. A woman who had seen dental hygiene grow from an uncertain idea into a licensed California profession.
Then, in January 1948, at only forty-eight years old, Sadie was found dead. There was no cause listed on her death certificate. Notes reportedly found in her apartment suggested, but did not confirm, suicide.
We should be careful here.
The dead deserve dignity. Mystery should not be turned into spectacle.
But grief belongs in the story.
Because Sadie’s ending asks us to sit with the cost of carrying a profession before the profession is strong enough to carry you back.
What burdens did she hold?
What battles had exhausted her?
What loneliness comes with being first?
We do not know.
What we do know is that after Sadie, others had to step forward.
One of them was March Fong, who replaced her as Director of Dental Hygiene and would later become ADHA President and eventually, as March Fong Eu, California’s Secretary of State.
The founding mother was gone.
But the profession she helped build was still alive.
And it was about to enter a much larger fight.
GO TO NEXT: Chapter 6 - A House Divided