NEW CANAAN—Forty years ago, Bill Fessler and Mary Beth O’Brien met in remote area of the Dominican Republic on a medical dentistry mission. He was in his last year at Georgetown University School of Dentistry and she was a nurse practicing at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center after graduating from Georgetown.
Their time in the Dominican Republic was the beginning of their life together, a life of putting their faith into action through service for others.
“God put us together,” Dr. Fessler recalls. “Within an hour of meeting Mary Beth, I knew we were meant to be together. I was struck by how beautiful she was. The first day we were working on the same team … and I was in love.”
As soon as he got home, he told his father he met the woman he was going to marry … and his prediction came true. They were married the following December in 1984 and that was just the beginning of their commitment to raising a family and a lifetime of service.
Today, Dr. Fessler has a private practice in Norwalk, and Mary Beth is a nurse practitioner at the Americares clinic in Danbury. The parents of four children, they are members of St. Aloysius Parish in New Canaan. Mary Beth and Bill were among the initial inductees into the Saint Luke Guild and currently serve as Board Members and leaders of the Communication & Planning Team.
With much energy and passion, they have worked tirelessly to help grow the guild. and founding members of the diocesan St. Luke Guild for healthcare professionals. The couple also continues to do service work locally, at soup kitchens, Malta House, ABC House and the Norwalk Smiles program. In addition, in 2012 they established a state-of-the-art dental center outside the capital of Honduras, which has cared for thousands of patients, most of them children.
Since founding the One World Surgery Holy Family Dental Center, the Fesslers have returned 20 times to provide care for the surrounding community and the more than 400 children at the Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (NPH), a home for orphaned and abandoned children that shares the grounds with the dental center.
“We believe that we have been tremendously blessed—as most Americans are—and when you are blessed, you give back,” Ms. Fessler said. “You cannot imagine the poverty … unless you experience it, and Honduras is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.”
In 2011, while they were on a mission project with their daughter Erin, who was a student at the University of Notre Dame, the Fesslers witnessed firsthand the need for dental care, and it moved them to begin their project. Many of their patients did not have access to care and had never seen a dentist.
“It is a tremendous resource to the community,” Dr. Fessler said.
Their daughter’s roommate at college was from the family that started the One World Surgery, which is a “a medical mission organization that treats a variety of orthopedic conditions and focuses on local partnerships and high-quality care.”
As a result of that trip, Dr. Fessler said, “Mary Beth and I decided to build a state-of-the-art dental clinic. I was going to buy everything brand new and bring it down there and set it up. It took us a long time to get it going, but the doors finally opened in 2017.”
Originally, they operated out of a makeshift dental facility, but they wanted to create a first-world center that would allow them to do advanced work, including comprehensive general dentistry, root canals and oral surgery.
Of course, once you create a world-class center, you need dentists. A year after opening, they hired Dr. Karen Chan, a Honduran dentist who works full-time at the center. Because of the Fesslers, the children at the orphanage and people in the community have access to the latest technology in dentistry in a facility founded as a Catholic mission.
“Our onsite local dentist, Dr. Karen Chan, and the team provide high-quality preventative and restorative dental care to the Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos children and local communities year-round from Monday through Friday,” Dr. Fessler said.
Each year, the center provides some 2,250 dental consults and 4,000 minor dental procedures with the local team and volunteer dentists and hygienists. Their procedures include cleanings, fillings, fluoride treatments, extractions, root canals, crowns and minor surgery.
The Fesslers visit the center to work twice a year, in the winter and in the fall. While there, Ms. Fessler sees patients in the primary care unit of One World Surgery. Throughout the year, others in the dental profession from the United States volunteer and often bring their families who are provided residence on the campus of One World Surgery.
“We want to reach out to people who have this sort of calling so they can contribute to a well-run organization,” Dr. Fessler said. “It is 100 percent non-profit. We have housing and great food and take care of the families of the volunteers. It sets a great example for the kids of the next generation to serve. Every time we do this, we always come back strengthened because they give you something you can’t get anywhere else. We go down there to serve, but we get so much in return that it makes us feel alive.”
“When you get outside your comfort zone and your neat little world, it will make a difference in your life,” Ms. Fessler says. “And if you’re not in a position to physically go and serve in Honduras, you can do it in your local community. But we ask you to help us with your treasure so that we can make this a reality in Honduras.”
(The Fesslers had a fund-raiser for the center in September 2022 and are planning another this spring. For further information, contact Mary Beth Fessler at fesslers6@gmail.com or Dr. Fessler at wfess58@gmail.com or to donate visit www.oneworldsurgery.org/dental-celebration.)
