Research Issue - Harvard School of Dental Medicine

alumni fo cus“What I have is due to what Harvard Dental School did for me. As a Harvard dentist,I was able to meet people, make the right connections, and earn a good living.”—Bob Hennessy, DMD ’44Navy had taken some rooms, and toured around the city. Flushwith extra per-diem pay, they made it a point never to eat at thesame restaurant twice, Hennessy remembers.One night, he was told to report to the airport; he was to be takento his ship. “I got on the plane, and we took off out into the darkness,going I knew not where,” he remembers. “In the morning, Ilooked out and saw an island. When we landed, the door openedand a girl said, ‘Welcome to Hawaii.’ There were soft smells andmuted noises of the birds; it was quite an interesting first viewof Hawaii.” As Starlight was not scheduled to arrive for anotherthree weeks, Hennessy and some friends rented a Jeep and againtook the opportunity to tour the area. When the ship finallyarrived, Hennessy had to take a water taxi to reach it. “Who wasdriving the water taxi but Phil Butterfield, who lived around thecorner from me in Westborough!” marvels Hennessy. An unexpectedbut welcome encounter during wartime.States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan,leading to the Japanese surrender. About a month later, Sehland his group went into Japan. One day, he and some friendstook a train to Nagasaki and witnessed the devastation.after the warHennessy, meanwhile, continued to serve on Starlight. “Afterthe Japanese surrender,” he says, “we were the first ship to carrytroops into Japan for the occupation. Then we were part ofthe Navy’s Operation Magic Carpet that brought troops homefrom the Pacific theater.” In all, Hennessy served as a dentiston board Starlight for six years. After the war, the ship traveledwidely, to areas including Tientsin, China; Okinawa; andcontinued on next pageFor Sehl’s part, the Navy assigned him as a dentist to theMarines (his fourth choice of assignment; his first choice wasto serve on a battleship). He met his wife, Floydene, when shewas a stewardess on the airplane he took out to California inthe fall of 1944 to begin his assignment—a chance meeting thathas led to a marriage of more than 64 years, three children,and five grandchildren. Sehl spent three months in San Diegobefore shipping out to the Pacific, using this time to “learn alot of dentistry.” He served as a land-based dentist with MarineCorps Aviation in the mid-Pacific and spent the last six monthsof the war in Okinawa. He was stationed there when the UnitedPhil Sehl, DMD ’44, left, and classmate Bob Hennessy, DMD ’44,together in Sasebo, Japan, following the Japanese surrender. Bothmen served as dentists in the Pacific theater during World War II.Sehl, already in Japan, took a train to meet Hennessy’s ship whenit arrived in Sasebo. The two have remained in touch since theirHSDM days.3