The ALEXANDRIA PAPERS #7

VICKY'S TEETH

I particularly like a series of books I keep on my shelf...  There Will Be War edited by Jerry Pournelle.  This is also the label on the notebooks in which I keep my notes and lectures for the Cleves-Juelich Succession Crisis and Twentieth Century military history beginning with the Franco-Prussian War.  One of those lectures is on the politics that set the stage for the Assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and lit the Twentieth Century on fire...  I, lacking a better idea, got descriptive and called the lecture "Vicky's Kids."  This collection of paragraphs is about her teeth.

Vicky... Victoria Regina or, Her Royal Highness Victoria, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India... had bad teeth.  Bad teeth seem to be a British thing, at least if Monty Python has any credibility.  Here is where the personal connection comes in.

When my wife and I were undergrads at the Ohio State University's Main Campus, my classes were somewhere around 12th and 17th Avenues.  Hers were south of the hospital.  We would meet for lunch on South Campus and, depending on the weather, sometimes I would attend her afternoon Anatomy and Physiology lecture with her.  I confess, the most useful thing I learned in her lecture was that a lower-case "c" with a bar over it was medical shorthand for "with."  My wife's lecture was in the huge auditorium in the School of Dentistry.  I have literally walked by the statue of Willoughby Dayton Miller over a hundred times.  In a fit of irony, the University of *ichigan also has a statue of Willoughby Dayton Miller.

Willoughby grew up on his father's farm along the north side of Hardscrabble Road on Lot 15 in Liberty Township.  This is approximately where the Stiers farm is today.  Willoughby was the youngest of eleven children.  About half of his older siblings had unnaturally short lives.  Willoughby did not do so much better, thanks to appendicitis.

I would not attempt to recount the esteemed Doctor's biography, please use your mad Google skills.  I just want to say four things,

• Dr. Miller wrote The Micro-organisms of the Human Mouth.  Today, it is considered foundational in modern dentistry and the primer on dental cavities.
• Dr. Miller worked on the teeth of many crowned heads of Europe.  Although ostensibly the Court Dentist of Prussia, the King of Prussia was Vicky's son.  Dr. Miller attended Vicky's cavities.
• Dr. Miller never forgot Alexandria and Alexandria never forgot Dr. Miller.  The names Willoughby, Dayton, or Miller were used in various combinations in the Bishop, Brooks, and Cady families, as well as others I may not have seen.
• Willoughby Dayton Miller is buried in our Maple Grove and is the only headstone in the shape of a cross.

When I was stationed in Germany, there were times when it seemed like we lived on the edge of a straight razor.  Tactical nukes, a lifespan that could have been measured in minutes and hours if the Cold War went hot.  Fears over whether my wife could get herself and my daughters to France in time, if that even mattered. Mom got me a subscription to The Johnstown Independant.  By the time I got it, it was old news, but still news to me.  I never forgot Alexandria.  Neither did Willoughby.

While it is tempting to say that W. D. Miller is Alexandria's greatest son, as I go through Alexandria's citizenry, so many have done so much who have called Alexandria home.