At the end of August, there was a pile of backpacks stacked against the wall near our front desk. Almost none of them came from us.
They came from patients who picked up an extra one on a Target run. From neighbors who dropped off three at a time. From families in Vestal, Endicott, Johnson City, and Binghamton who saw a flyer and decided a kid they will never meet should not start the school year with a plastic grocery bag.
School is back in session now, and those backpacks are on shoulders somewhere in the Southern Tier. We wanted to say thank you properly, which means talking less about the drive and more about the people who filled it.
One of the small moments we keep coming back to: Dr. Zietsman's sons brought in backpacks of their own. Nobody had to explain the concept twice. A kid hears that another kid needs a backpack and the math is finished.
Adults tend to complicate it. We schedule around it, we wait for a convenient month, we wonder whether our one bag really matters. Children skip all of that and just hand the thing over.
If you have been looking for a way to talk to your own kids about giving, a school supply drive is about as clear a lesson as you will find. The need is concrete, the solution is concrete, and they can carry it into the building themselves.
This month our Dollars for Scholars recipient, Nabeeha, started her college career. Watching a local student head off to that next chapter is one of the genuine pleasures of being a practice that has stayed in one community for a long time.
Dollars for Scholars is a local, volunteer-driven effort, and every dollar raised for it goes to students from right here. If you have ever thought about supporting a scholarship fund, this is a straightforward one to support, and the recipients are people your family may already know from the neighborhood.
We were also proud to sponsor Hall Groat II's exhibition, Shared Spaces, through the Broome County Arts Council this summer. The exhibition has closed, but the Arts Council has not, and it continues to put work by regional artists in front of regional audiences on a budget that is always tighter than it should be.
A dental practice sponsoring an art show sounds like an odd pairing until you have lived here a while. The same region that produces the artists produces the patients, the teachers, the students, and the volunteers. It is one community, and it is worth investing in the parts of it that make people want to stay.
The same goes for the gift baskets we sent to two senior proms this spring. Small gestures, but a milestone is a milestone, and those students deserved a good night.
Vestal Dental Associates has been part of this community since 1955. Over nearly seventy years of practice history in Vestal, one thing has stayed constant: the people in our chairs are the same people at the school concert, in the gallery, on the sideline at the soccer field.
Health is not something that happens only in an operatory. A child who starts the school year feeling prepared shows up differently. A student who gets a scholarship makes different choices. That is not a dental outcome we can chart, but it is a real one.
Our doctors and team members live here, raise families here, and hike the same trails as everyone else. Supporting the community is not a program we run. It is just what you do when you are staying.
None of these organizations need us specifically. They need people. If you have room to help this fall, all three take support year round: Dollars for Scholars, the Broome County Arts Council, and the school supply drives that run in your own district every August.
Thank you to everyone who donated a backpack, bought a raffle ticket, attended an exhibition, or simply told a friend about something worth supporting. It added up to a lot more than it would have without you.
We will keep showing up, and we hope you will too. If you would like to learn more about what our practice cares about beyond dentistry, we would be glad to tell you about it the next time you are in the office, or by phone at (607) 785-3339.