PDA PROFILE
Dr. William Trice
By Dr. Stephen T. Radack III, Editor
Editor’s Note: We are reprinting this feature on
Dr. Bill Trice from the July/August issue due to a printing error on
one of the pages when it appeared previously.
Spending a couple hours with any person who has lived
for 90+ years can be enlightening, but spending those
two hours with a person who has lived the life – both
professionally and personally – Dr. William B. Trice has,
can seem like time is going at the speed of light. I had
the opportunity to spend that enriching time with Bill
back on a cold Friday last December. It had taken some
back and forth with his daughter Dr. Angela Trice-Borgia
to make that time possible. Bill is now in a nursing home
facility spending his time getting his legs working again
and ready to dance at his grandson’s wedding later this year.
Being from Erie, I have been fortunate enough to have
spent many hours over the past 30 years talking to Bill
and his wife Dr. Mildred Trice. I feel like I could have
written about Bill without even sitting down for those
two hours in December, but as always there were new
details I learned about him that I had not heard before.
William Trice was born on January 28, 1924 in Newton,
Ga. He was raised in Weirton, W.Va., when his father came
north to work in the steel mill in Weirton. After high school,
Bill matriculated to Georgia State College and it was there
that he met his beloved Mildred. They got married when
he was 19, and shortly after
Bill enlisted in the United States
Navy and was off to the South
Pacific Theater to serve as a
Navy steward in World War II.
Bill had his first dynamic
exposure to dentistry when a
naval dental officer in Hawaii
invited him to see the removal
of a globumaxillary cyst. The
event peaked Bill’s interest and
right there he knew that he
wanted to pursue dentistry after
his time in the Navy was over.
After the war, he returned home and joined his young
bride at the University of Pittsburgh to complete his
undergraduate degree and then his DMD in 1953. Like
any new dentist, he wondered where to go to start his
dental career. As luck would have it, a dental salesman
from Erie, Charlie Nier, who ran a company called Dental
Service, told Bill to take a look at Erie. And the rest as
they say is history.
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