#lovewhatyoudo Archives

Dr. Marty Killeen

By storyhook

Don’t let his calm demeanor and easy smile fool you.

He’s the type of guy who wakes up every Sunday morning to go for a five-hour bike ride for fun.

In dental college, he was one of the few students with only two years of undergrad experience due to all the college coursework he had completed during high school.

No, Dr. Marty Killeen is no slacker, and it’s this fearless determination that has led to an interesting and varied dental career.

At the end of a fellowship in pediatric dentistry, Dr. Marty (as his patients call him) decided to start his practice in Lincoln to be near family. With the economy doing well and a limited number of pediatric dentists practicing in the area, he and a fellow new grad decided to go big and start their own practice, complete with a newly constructed building just south of Southwest High School.

Despite the bold move, like most new graduates, Marty supplemented his growing practice with an assortment of part-time positions.

He picked up jobs at the People’s Health Center and Health Department, and found himself face-to-face with children who had never been to the dentist and who often had a very limited understanding of English. He enjoyed the interactions with the kids and learned new ways to keep uncertain patients and their parents calm.

Two years following graduation, Marty’s dad inadvertently provided him with another unique opportunity when he began asking questions about how to outfit a dental team for a medical mission to Haiti.

“After getting question after question, I finally asked my dad if he wanted me to take over the trip. Nine years later, we’re about to take our ninth consecutive medical mission down to Haiti.”

The first trip to Haiti occurred two years before the devastating earthquake that hit the country in 2010. Over the last eight years, Marty has seen incremental change, but he understands that even the most minor shift can make a great difference in the life of one individual.

“We set up our clinic in the middle of Haiti, in a place called the Kobonal Mission – basically in the middle of nowhere. A lot of people farm and you see them walking around with their machetes and no shoes. When we first went, the place barely had electricity. We had to fly to the location in small Cessna airplanes, circling the landing spot twice in order to scare away the livestock that graze there.”

One of the biggest improvements he’s seen since the earthquake are the roads, which are now semi-paved and allow the team to get there by bus.

Dr. Marty jokingly refers to the trip as the Haitian Vacation, and talks fondly of the results he’s been able to witness from eight years of treating patients with little to no other health care services.

“Mainly, we are doing extractions and fillings, sometimes even dentures. An oral surgeon accompanies us for the more difficult cases. Because they speak Creole, the patient simply points to the areas that are hurting, we take a look, agree on a number and then get to work.”

He goes on, “One of the most rewarding things are the relationships we’re beginning to form. We are starting to recognize families and see that our education efforts are making a difference. During our first year in Haiti, we were able to see 400 patients as a team. This year, with 18 people going down, we anticipate serving 2,000.”

The team has also seen a reduction in tooth extraction and infection.

“There are unique challenges for us in Haiti. We line the kids up and use an interpreter to show the kids one-by-one how to use a toothbrush and talk about reducing their sugar intake. The problem is – these kids usually don’t have enough to eat, so they offset their hunger by chewing the sugar cane that is on the roadside and in the fields.”

Despite the difficulties, they are excited when they see their efforts paying off.

“We were driving along a dirt road when we looked up to see a kid standing in the middle of the Haitian countryside, brushing his teeth with his new toothbrush.”

Though the stories he tells seem like a distant reality from the common American experience, Dr. Marty easily finds connections. He switches between descriptions of his patients in Haiti, those he continues to treat at the Health Department, and the growing practice at his own clinic.

Dr. Marty finds that people in every place have the same basic needs and desires.

He takes pleasure helping the six-year-old in his clinic overcome his fear of a regular check-up. Likewise, he is grateful for the trust he receives from parents commuting from all over Nebraska and even out-of-state when their general dentist is unable to treat a child’s more complicated dental needs. Or the child in Haiti who looks up at him and lays still while the strange dentist from a different country offers comfort and pain-relief during an extraction.

“It’s never just about filling cavities, it’s about the people.”

The combination and the diversity of needs and outlooks Marty is daily presented with create a multi-faceted job that requires patience, persistence, and a great deal of care for the patient. He is grateful he has found a career that allows him to care for people in a way that shows them how much they matter.

February 1, 2017

Love4

Christina Hoyt

By storyhook

Hospitable, a strong introvert, art lover, horticulture fan and environmentalist?

Probably not a typical combination of attributes found on a job description.

Fortunately for the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum (NSA), Christina Hoyt happens to have it all.

As Executive Director of the NSA, Christina has to have her facts straight about plants. But it was the intersection of her personality and passions that made the job the right place to be.

At first glance, she is a shy, blonde woman, decked out in whatever gear is appropriate for the weather and task at hand. Today, it’s a pair of Sorel boots she recently purchased.

“I got a great deal on them when I was home for Christmas!”

Home was originally Minnesota, a place Christina remembers as one filled with all kinds of wildness. “I lived on the edge of everything. There were wetlands, prairie, lakes, forests. And my family always loved to be out in it. We went camping all the time.”

It was this engagement with the diversity and beauty in the outdoors that launched Christina onto a winding path eventually leading to Nebraska’s doorstep.

“When I started college in Iowa (at Cornell College), I was an Environmental Studies major. I loved art too, but my mom told me I needed to make money,” she said with a smile.

While the “science geek” in her loved her classes at Cornell, she felt something missing. The art element.

In the middle of her junior year, Christina decided to make a change and moved to Nebraska to join a group of friends she had met during a summer job in Colorado. She enrolled at UNL, changing her major to Horticulture and Landscape Design.

It wasn’t until an internship with the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum that she truly began to see her passions meld together.

What she discovered was an organization that was involved in education and in beautifying communities across the state through planning and planting green spaces.

“I wanted to address environmental challenges in my work and make a mark for myself, but found my thought-process shifting.”

The changes the NSA was effecting were real. And it wasn’t on the shoulders of one individual–it was hundreds of different people with different backgrounds, working together for the sake of beautifying the communities they lived in. In the process of this beautification, they were also doing great things: finding balance for the local ecosystem, learning how to sustain clean water, addressing pollinator decline–to name a few of the myriad of positive impacts.

Christina’s love for the environment and art were coming together and were blending with the realization of her passion for people.

While her perspective expanded, her skills and knowledge developed and Christina took on many jobs throughout the organization. Beginning as an intern, she filled a variety of roles before being hired as the Executive Director.

The unique thing about Christina is that she never talks about herself as it relates to the NSA. Instead, she always directs whoever is listening to the many people she teams up with.

“They wouldn’t tell you themselves, because they are too humble, but everyone I work with does great things,” she says. “One of the first elements I loved about this organization was the high level of grassroots support.”

She points out the reach of the organization, “We have 104 affiliate sites and 1100 members throughout the state. We have worked on green spaces in the middle of Omaha and spaces in the smallest community in the sandhills of northwest Nebraska. Our horticulturist grows native Nebraska plants in our greenhouses in Mead for communities and the public. And we have our Spring Affair plant sale coming up!”

When asked about a picture of her hanging high from ropes in Fontenelle Forest, she laughs, “And I’m scared of heights!” She describes the picture, noting an event the NSA participated in during an Earth Day celebration in Omaha just before the organization’s annual plant sale.

“Yeah, I normally like to go home after work and cook or read a good book. I’ve usually used up most of my energy at work.”

Yet Christina goes on to describe a meal she has shared with a neighbor or a good yoga class she has recently taken.

“I love plants,” she comments about her job, “but I love making our communities better even more.”

This is evident in every aspect of her life.

It is the rare individual that understands the connection between the land and the people living and caring for that space. Christina seems to have an innate grasp on the importance of this relationship because it is one she highly values for her own life and the lives of those she is closest to.

“I love that Nebraska isn’t just one place. It’s many places woven together. The challenge of this prairie state is that it’s generally difficult to grow things here, but that fact does not stop people from persisting.”

Christina Hoyt is doing her part to help weave beauty into these spaces.

Sometimes the things that make us who we are, lead us to the place we are supposed to be. For Christina, so many of the things that matter to her are right here, at the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum.

January 11, 2017

Love2