LITTLE MOUNTAIN — Dr. Bobby McBride opened Little Mountain Dentistry this month, bringing with him decades of experience.
McBride said he does not know why he wanted to be a dentist, just that he wanted to be one.
“I grew up wanting to be a dentist, even in high school. I went to Wofford College, and played football, and then went on to the Medical College of Virginia, in Richmond,” he said. “I graduated in 1965, and I practiced in Greenwood for 20 odd years, and then Hilton Head for 20 something years, and I retired for a few years and worked part time, and it was not enough. It is a profession with me, but it became an addiction.”
Over the years McBride has gained a lot of experience in the field, which includes helping those in need. This includes helping to equip a clinic in La Romana, Dominican Republic, to help poor children.
“It was nice. I had a dental clinic and we used to service poor children in South Carolina for a while, and it gained popularity and a number of other folks started, and so I donated that clinic, through a relationship I had with Mr. Pete Dye, the golf course architect,” McBride said. “We had the dental clinic there in the city that serviced the children that came to school there, and then we used the mobile van that we donated to go out to the Batey, which is a neighborhood out in the sugar cane fields.”
McBride added that the van would help children who did not go into town very often.
Along with his brother Doyle, McBride had a business where he supported the U.S. military overseas. They had offices in Dubai, Baghdad and in Afghanistan. Through that relationship, McBride and his brother met a dentist in Yerevan, Armenia.
“When I was in Hilton Head I refurbished my office there, and through the relationship with the State Department, I came to know the dentist in Armenia, and we donated the equipment in Hilton Head to the Armenian dentist. I went there for a week to help him install it,” McBride said. “My brother and I also helped a Russian dentist start the first public clinic in St. Petersburg, Russia. We loaned him the money to equip his clinic there, and now he has 20 plus dental clinics throughout Russia.”
After he retired McBride built houses for about four or five years. He knew there was a void for a dentist in this area.
“The lake is so populated, and the countryside is so populated here. I had wanted to get back into dentistry. I just did not see the opportunity that appealed to me until I saw Little Mountain,” he said.
Little Mountain Dentistry is located at 47 North Mill Street in a building designed by McBride’s son, Kevin.
“He’s in real estate, and he just has an eye for that sort of thing. He has helped several physicians equip their offices in Atlanta, design and equip them,” McBride said.
Little Mountain Dentistry is open Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. McBride said that a lot of dentists do not work that many days a week, but he has always been a hard worker, and he has always had his clinics open six days a week.
“We offer some things in dentistry that are not common in every office. I was one of the first, if not the first, dentist to start doing implants in South Carolina,” McBride said.
