By Rodger Morrow for Beaver County Business
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I’ve never bothered to conduct a scientific poll on the subject, but I’ve yet to find anyone who enjoys going to the dentist. So imagine my surprise, almost 20 years ago now, in finding a dentist who hates going to the dentist almost as much as I do.
That man is Dr. Dennis Clayton, who set up his practice in Bridgewater, PA, a town known in my lifetime mainly for the Keystone Bakery—a factory-sized operation that perfumed the neighborhood with the smell of fresh loaves and supplied the whole county with its daily bread. Bridgewater was never glamorous, but at least it gave Beaver County its crust. Today, thanks to Clayton Dentistry, it also offers something rarer than bread: a dentist who seems to share your dread of the profession.
Clayton’s confession—that he himself never liked going to the dentist—was, for me, the beginning of a long and loyal relationship. Imagine a man who has built his livelihood around the very thing he fears, then turns that paradox into empathy. Where other dentists rely on the solemn rituals of Highlights magazines from 1962 and grim silence in the waiting room, Clayton has spent decades trying to soften the ordeal. “Painless dentistry” may never quite live up to its name, but in his hands it becomes closer to reality than one might think possible.
I sometimes wonder if he missed his calling as a parish priest or psychologist. He talks less about molars than about fear. He anticipates your winces before you make them. He distracts with humor as the needle descends. He knows the patient’s experience isn’t about enamel and roots—it’s about the very real terror of surrendering one’s mouth to a man with a drill.
He’s not alone anymore. His son, Mark Clayton, both a dentist and oral surgeon, now practices alongside him. And more recently, Kevin Carter, DMD, has joined the practice as well. Together, they form something like a dental guild in miniature, a small, stubborn tribe in Bridgewater devoted to sparing Beaver County the full trauma of dentistry. In an age when corporate dentistry chains treat patients like billing codes, this feels positively radical.
What sets them apart isn’t only empathy but also their embrace of technology. The tools may still look unnerving, but they work wonders. Clayton’s office now boasts lasers and sleek, robot-like devices that can fashion a crown while you wait. What used to mean multiple visits, weeks of awkward temporary fittings, and the mental gymnastics of finding parking twice has been compressed into an hour or two. Fear and tedium, those twin horsemen of the dental apocalypse, are banished with gadgets so futuristic they wouldn’t look out of place in the SpaceX control room.
It’s hard not to notice the irony: the dentist who dislikes dentistry has gone all in on technology precisely to make it as tolerable as possible. One suspects that if he could invent a robot to walk into the chair for you, he would. Until then, he’s content with lasers, same-day crowns, and a chairside manner that reminds you he’s as uneasy about the whole affair as you are.
Bridgewater, of course, has known its share of discomfort. Perched at the confluence of the Beaver and Ohio rivers, it’s a place that’s endured floods, mill closures, and the quiet indignities of post-industrial life. To find, in such a town, a practice so devoted to making the intolerable tolerable seems fitting. Keystone Bakery may no longer perfume the mornings, but in its place we have Clayton Dentistry: a different sort of comfort, less fragrant but no less essential.
The other dentists I’ve known seemed happiest when my teeth guaranteed them another three or four return visits. Not Clayton. His joy is in dismissing you for six months, in seeing a healthy mouth that requires no repeat performance. His ideal practice, you suspect, would be one where everyone’s teeth were so perfect that he’d go out of business—a peculiar business model, but perhaps the most honest one I’ve encountered.
And so I keep coming back, not out of affection for drills and suction straws but out of respect for a man—and now a team—who have made a small vocation out of sharing our fear and lightening it. For nearly two decades I’ve watched Dennis Clayton orchestrate his peculiar ministry, aided now by Mark and Kevin, and I’ve prayed only that he never retires.
For if there is one thing rarer than painless dentistry, it is the dentist who admits the truth: that he, too, would rather be anywhere else. That’s the man you can trust with your teeth.
