There’ve been miles of smiles over the years for Dr. Joe Boland

Joe Boland has opened more mouths than any man in Macon.

For 20 years, he served mouth-watering barbecue at Fincher’s on Houston Avenue, starting as a curb boy when he was 12 years old and working his way up to manager.

He has spent the past 50 years as one of the city’s most beloved dentists. For a half-century, he has crowned crowns, built bridges, filled cavities and picked and prodded his way around incisors and molars.

A number of local dentists can claim to have worked on the teeth of the children and grandchildren of their patients.

But when Eugenia Carter, who turned 3 years old last month, climbed into Boland’s dental chair, it marked the fifth generation from the same Macon family to occupy that seat.

Eugenia’s late great-grandmother was among Boland’s first patients when he opened his practice on Riverside Drive in 1967, the year after he started in general dentistry with the Macon-Bibb County Health Department.

At age 86, the reigning dean of Macon dentists is friendly, gentle and kind. His face is always sunny side up.

His practice is somewhat unique, too. After moving from Riverside to Northside Drive, where his office remained for 30 years, he and his wife, Mary Jane, bought a one-level home on Wesleyan Drive.

It had a mother-in-law suite, and Boland moved his practice there 10 years ago next month.

So he is never late for work. It’s only a few steps from one door to the next.

At the gates of the courtyard is a sign that reads Villa de Sorrise. It is Italian for “house of smiles.

If he had his way when he was growing up, he would have become an architect. It was his ambition. He loved design and mechanical drawing.

He was the oldest of five children of Joseph Lee Boland Sr. and Mattie Kate Sullivan Boland. The family lived in the Mikado community along Houston Road in south Bibb County.

His father was an automobile mechanic and owned his own garage during the Depression years. When World War II began, he was recruited to Wright-Patterson Air Base in Ohio to train as an airplane mechanic. He came home and went to work at Robins Air Force Base.

Boland attended Bruce Elementary School and Lanier High. When he was 11, he got a job as a paperboy. The first house on his route was Minnie Lee Handley, who would become the matriarch of the five generations of patients he would later see as a dentist. Her son, Dan, was one of his best friends. They were in Boy Scouts together.

The following year, he was hired as a curb hop at Fincher’s Bar-B-Q on Houston Avenue. He worked there through high school. Even after he enrolled at Georgia Tech to study to become an architect, he would hitchhike home to Macon on Friday afternoons, work all weekend, then catch the bus back to Atlanta on Sunday.

ANOTHER PATH

When he transferred to Mercer, he worked the night shift at Fincher’s. He got married in 1951, and he and Mary Jane started a family. The Army snapped him up and sent him to Korea for two years, where his background in the food business earned him duty as a “food adviser” for 27 mess halls.

“A glorified mess sergeant,’’ he said, laughing.

He returned home and got back his old job at Fincher’s. He later became manager. Working almost every day, nights and weekends exacted its toll and accelerated his decision to pursue another career path.

Boland remembered an article he had read in Kiplinger magazine about different professions. A story on dentistry got his attention. He applied and was accepted to dental school at the University of Tennessee, where he was a dozen years older than most of his classmates.

He graduated as president of his class at age 36. His class will have its 50-year reunion later this month at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis.

After a year at the health department, Boland opened his practice on Riverside Drive in a brick building next to Dr. Gus Williams, a high school classmate. He was there for 10 years before designing and building his new office on Northside Drive, where he spent most of his years in practice.

In 2006, he moved to Wesleyan Drive. The House of Smiles is up a hill at the end of a long, winding driveway. Besides general dentistry, his focus is on aesthetic and restorative dentistry, so the old architect in him has a chance to work, too. He has a small staff and only keeps office hours three days a week. There is no timetable for retiring.

“I’m not trying to set any records,’’ he said. “If it gets to where I’m not enjoying it or people aren’t enjoying me, I will stop. It has been an honor and a privilege, a joy in my life, to take care of families and have them return.’’

Mary Reid Carter said her daughter, Eugenia, crawled in Boland’s chair for her first official cleaning this past summer.

“He is so proud to have a fifth generation,’’ Carter said. “He loves our family. You can just see it in his eyes.’’

Handley was Carter’s great-grandmother. Her grandmother, Barbara Roberts, was one of Handley’s children. Gena Franklin, the oldest of the Roberts children, is Carter’s mother.

After she graduated from college, Carter moved to Charleston, S.C. She looked for another dentist. After having grown up with Boland, she couldn’t find a suitable replacement.

“I really missed Dr. Boland, so I started coming home to have my teeth cleaned,’’ she said. “He is so congenial and always happy to see you.’’

Boland recently did a crown on a 97-year-old woman.

“She was questioning whether she was going to live long enough to enjoy it,’’ Boland said, “I told her I did a bridge on a woman who was 97 and lived to be 106.’’

This story was originally published September 9, 2016 at 2:51 PM with the headline "There’ve been miles of smiles over the years for Dr. Joe Boland."