Dentists give 150 people new Valentine’s Day smiles

The line on Milwaukee Avenue reached down the block and snaked around the corner on Thursday. One hundred fifty people stood, sat on the sidewalk, brought their own chairs, drank coffee, ate sandwiches and waited.

While similar scenes unfold outside box offices when major concerts come to town, there was no headline act appearing in Avondale. Residents from all over Chicago and as far away as Indiana waited in line for a different reason: free dental care.

For the third year, Big Smile Dental offered free dental services as part of their Dentists with Heart program. Regardless of socioeconomic status, everyone over the age of 12 was eligible as long as they were willing to brave the cold and spend the day waiting in line. The practice, owned by Dr. Theodore Siegel, also gives free care to children one day during the summer. “Look around,” the 51-year-old dentist said. “Right here in Chicago on Milwaukee Avenue there are people who can’t afford dental work.”

Seven providers, including an oral surgeon and a periodontist, dental hygienists and support staff worked without pay and spent the day performing extractions, doing routine cleanings and filling teeth.

The first patients were admitted at 9:00 a.m. At that point, some had been waiting outside for five hours. Most were exhibiting enthusiasm not usually seen during a visit to the dentist. “I’m getting a filling, and I’m super-excited!” Janine Nock, 27, said. “Free dental care is really hard to come by. It’s a really nice thing to do for the community.”

Many of the patients, like Logan Square resident Erwin Pacheco, 53, were there for emergency dental care. Pacheco said that he had been in pain for two weeks, just waiting for February 14.

Others saw Siegel’s offer as an opportunity to get a cleaning or a filling that they might not normally be able to afford. Nidhie Singh, 25, a student at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill., drove for more than an hour with a friend to arrive at 4:30 a.m. She needed a filling, and said that dental insurance was too expensive for her student budget to handle.

Although free health care is available throughout Chicago, free dental care is much harder to come by. Both the Cook County Department of Public Health and the Chicago Department of Public Health Clinics offer dental services, but have income requirements. Moreover, many clinics require registration, and a call placed to the Comprehensive Clinic in Uptown revealed that registration is currently closed until April.

Although she was grateful for the services rendered, Truman College student Rebecca Grace, 25, was frustrated with the health care system. “I think it’s a damn shame that people have to wait in line to have free dental care,” she said. “In some countries this would never happen.”

Dr. Siegel sees his success as an “opportunity to give back to the people who have made us so successful. It’s a privilege for me to be in a position to give back.”

By the end of the day, the doctors at Big Smile Dental had seen more than 150 patients, adding to the 875-plus patients the practice has already provided with free dental care.

Community members, groups, move forward on local rail trail

Today the elevated freight line that runs 15 feet above street level through Logan Square, Humboldt Park, Bucktown and Wicker Park is a graveyard of old railroad machinery, rusty needles and bottles. When Ben Helphand looks at it, however, he sees an area that’s already being used by the community—one that has extensive possibilities for community recreation, as well as improving the area’s health and safety.

As one of the founders of the non-profit Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail and president of the Board of Directors, Helphand, who is also executive director of local non-profit NeighborSpace, is working in conjunction with community members, other non-profit organizations, neighborhood groups and government agencies to transform the three mile byway into a linear park.

“Everybody who lived along the trail had already engaged with it and explored it,” Helphand said, explaining how he and others became interested in the Bloomingdale Trail. “They were using it for art, jogging, and unfortunately, illicit activities. This is mostly just this wonderful strip of nature where [community members] can get away from it all.”

Since Friends was formed in 2003, the group has spearheaded a snowballing effort to transform the abandoned freight line into a pedestrian and bike path, accented by “pocket parks” every quarter mile to allow easy access on and off the trail.

Today, the project is guided by the Bloomingdale Collaborative, a public/private partnership that includes the Friends, the Trust for Public Land, the City of Chicago, the Chicago Department of Transportation and the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

Together, these different groups and agencies are working towards a common goal of obtaining the funds, land and support needed to make the Bloomingdale Trail a reality.

In the past five years, a lot of unseen work has been done. All the access points have been designated and secured. Many were existing city land, but several were purchased or donated. These transactions were facilitated by the Trust for Public Land, which is a national non-profit land conservation organization, and include most recently park space at Albany and Whipple avenues and a large site at Kimball Avenue.

Helphand couldn’t give a timeline for the completed project, but said that the access points will probably be the first to be developed.

“I’m not impatient in the slightest,” he said. “I don’t want to wait a hundred years, but I do realize that these things take a very long time. And the important thing is that it’s moving along, and it’s fun along the way.”

The Bloomingdale Trail has been on the City of Chicago’s radar for a long time, Helphand said. The Logan Square Open Space Plan was approved by the city in July 2004, and called attention to the fact that Logan Square has the least amount of open space per capita than any other Chicago neighborhood except South Lawndale. Since then, the Bloomingdale Trail has become a much bigger priority for City Hall.

Ultimately, Helphand hopes the Bloomingdale Trail will be a “multi-use greenway that accommodates all users” that will fulfill many needs in the lower-income communities of Humboldt Park and Logan Square.

Lucy Gomez-Feliciano, health outreach director at the Logan Square Neighborhood Association and Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail board member, believes that the trail will help to improve the health of a community with high rates of asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure.

“The trail will be a unique space that allows families to be physically active together,” she said in an e-mail.

In high crime areas that keep many residents off the streets, the trail could be a haven, she added. “For members of our community who would like to ride their bikes but are too afraid to on the streets, this would be like bringing the lakefront trail or a trail in the forest preserves into our backyards.”

The issue of safety is one that has been oft-addressed. The Bloomingdale Trail runs nearby 12 schools and several community centers and churches, and Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail hopes that the trail can link these institutions and provide a safe path for students to travel. The group’s website notes that the finished trail will include “lighting, guardrails, webcams, bicycle police, and emergency telephones” to ensure safety.

Although he doesn’t think that his students will necessarily be able to use the trail to travel to and from school, Principal Harry Randell of Richard Yates Elementary School in Logan Square thinks the trail will be unquestionably beneficial.

“I think the fact that the area will be built up and beautified will make the children feel better about the neighborhood,” he said.

Randell also felt that the trail would provide a much-needed viaduct for students to travel outside Logan Square, giving them a straight path east towards downtown.

Despite the wide support that the Bloomingdale Trail has garnered from officials and local residents, there also appears to be a small population that would prefer the trail to stay as it is.

On the user review site www.yelp.com, there are six reviews from those who have hiked the pre-gentrified Bloomingdale Trail. Many of the users bemoan the changes coming that will turn the trail from a wild area populated by litter and homeless people to a bike path and walking trail.

“[The Bloomingdale Trail] is a great way to experience the different flavors of neighborhood Chicago has to offer,” said a user who identified herself as Rebecca G. on the website. “It is proposed that this trail soon be cleaned up and made into a bike path. When this happens, though [it will be] very cool for many people, all its character will be gone.”

Helphand, however, has a mental picture of a trail with plenty of character. “I have a vision in my head of an active trail with old people and young people, biking and walking and sitting and reading and kissing in this beautiful space,” he said. “Every time we can hold an event and I can see a similar vision being born in someone’s brain and see it in their face, that keeps me going.”