The Dentist Who Kept the Lights On in Appalachia

In the coal town of Bradshaw, West Virginia, Dr. Russell Meade opened a dental clinic in 2014 — the same year the last mine shut down and half the storefronts on Main Street went dark. Friends in Richmond told him he was burying his career. The numbers made no sense.

But Russell had grown up twenty miles down the road, and he remembered what it felt like to have a toothache and nowhere to go. So he set his fees on a sliding scale, pinned to what families could actually pay. Miners' wives brought jars of apple butter. He took them. A teenager offered to mow the clinic lawn all summer in exchange for wisdom tooth removal. He shook on it.

When opioid addiction ravaged McDowell County, Russell started a free Saturday clinic and trained his hygienists to spot signs of abuse in children's mouths. He did not waver when collection agencies called. He did not flinch when the county's population dropped another twelve percent.

A decade later, his clinic is still open. Three young dentists have joined him. The building next door — once boarded up — is now a community health center that bears his name, though he voted against the naming.