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May 23, 2008

By Kevin Henry
Dental Assisting Digest Editor

Editor's Note: On Saturday, May 10, an EF-4 tornado with winds of nearly 200 miles per hour, devastated the town of Picher, Okla. Six people were killed, including 30-year-old Mistie Kelley, the clinic director and new patient coordinator for Dr. Greg Hiebert's practice in Miami, Okla. Many media outlets reported shortly after the tornado that Kelley died trying to protect her 5-year-old son, Brandon, after they and the boy's father, Jack, took refuge in a closet in the family's home, which was completely destroyed.

I've lived in Oklahoma my entire life, and I know firsthand the power of tornadoes. In a matter of mere minutes, they can destroy so much, then just return to the clouds. On that day in Picher, the tornado took one of our own, a woman Dr. Hiebert describes as "the soul of my practice."

As a tribute to Mistie, I recently spoke to Dr. Hiebert about what kind of person she was, the day she died, and life since that fateful day in Picher. The following are his words, and they form a beautiful tribute to a beautiful person.

Words from Dr. Greg Hiebert:
"She started working here when she was 23, and she was only 30 when she died, so I had the pleasure of working with her for seven years. She came into her position looking at it as a job, but in the span of those seven years, she turned a job into a career. There are certain people who can transition their job into a career, and she was one of those people.

She was the perfect professional. No one came in here who didn't love her. She was always the person that people went to when they needed someone to listen to them or have their problems solved. She was an unbelievably gorgeous human being, but her looks were just a shell. If you knew her heart and her soul, you knew her beauty was 10 times on the inside what it was on the outside.

We lost a wonderful human being who had nothing but potential ahead of her. Losing her has proven to all of us in this practice how life can be taken so quickly from you.

She didn't know the tornado was coming until it was almost on top of them. She had just gotten out of the shower and Jack (the father of her son, Brandon) heard a noise outside and went out to see what it was. He saw the tornado, and it was no more than 100 yards away from them. They went into the closet, but the tornado ripped right through the house. The tornado moved the house 1.5 blocks away and moved their vehicle 2.5 blocks away. She and her son ended up a good distance away from Jack. I know she did everything she could to save her son, and he ended up with just a few lacerations and was OK. He's old enough (5 years old) to be able to remember his mom, but I know he doesn't know the lifelong impact of losing her. If you look at the pictures of Picher, a hell of a lot of people were lucky. She wasn't.

Our office manager laid by Mistie's body after it was discovered. She had lost not just a coworker, but a dear friend. We've all gone through some significant emotional trauma. We've kept our expectations low for how much or hard we've worked since her death. We can't fill her shoes. No one could. Right now, we're focusing on getting a grasp of what each of our potentials are so that we can help fill in the gaps where she was, but not fill her shoes.

We've decided as a staff to work 90 days and keep her on salary, with full benefits and everything, so that there is a paycheck coming to the family. It's a step in our healing process, and we've asked patients and peers for donations to help Brandon and the family. We've raised nearly $10,000 so far, and we think we'll beat our goal of $30,000. We want to help her family. We've bonded together as a staff and we're just working one day at a time. We're not going to try to fix everything right now, but we're going to take some steps in the healing process.

She operated the majority of our new patient scheduling, financing, and scheduling for hygiene and recare. She touched practically every patient in our practice every day. She tied the knots at the end of the day to make things work together. She was the soul of my practice."

Editor's Note: To make a donation in Mistie's name, please contact Dr. Hiebert at Greg Hiebert.

To see some of the devastation from the Picher tornado, log on to Picher tornado.

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