Well I was up at 5am to get the restaurant crew out to the Saturday Morning Market and met the City crew at 7 to begin the set up. I moved those damn tents 4 different times to get the right configuration!! Anyway by 9 am we had our first sign in and by 10 when I opened the gates so to speak we had 35 seated and patiently waiting. We were telling people at this time that with 3 dentists we ESTIMATED the wait time to be 30 mins. WRONG!!! it was more like an hour plus! We kept a full "wait seating" the entire time and we even told people they could wait in Walgreens and we had someone there who we would call and they had access to Walgreens in store intercom. We eventually even let people put their cell # down and we called them when they were close. It was just sooo muggy and I only had around 35 seats under tent.

Temps were in the high 80's and the humidity was bad to say the least. By 10:30 my Dr Thee's shirt was soaked. Everybody kept their thankful spirits. I made jokes all day, made them applaud the dentists and we even had a lady waiting sing songs to keep everyone in good spirits. Only in Gulfport.

I made notes of improvements for next year.

The Regional Manager of Walgreens was on hand. Walgreens was GREAT. They set up their own tent and gave away ice cold water and a Walgreens "green" shopping bag filled with stuff. They also called in a Pepsi cart that sold hot dogs, drinks and chips for a dollar each with all the proceeds to come to the OCF (my suggestion). Brian don't expect much because I didn't see many people buying since they all wanted clean teeth!!

RE the Regional Manager. He approached me towards the end and was so impressed with the public's interest that he told me next year that he would bring in one of their 14 nationwide diagnostic trucks that perform 8 different free diagnostic tests including blood pressure, cholesterol, bone density, etc and we would make a much larger event out of this thing. We agreed on April next year (after the 15th for sure) and exchanged cards.

Only bad thing was I didn't think through that 10 to 2 thing well enough. By 1 my dentists were pooped and looking forward to stopping at exactly 2 but we already had a waiting line that would possibility take them past 2 so I had to make a decision to stop allowing people to sign up. Therefore not only did we have to turn away at least 30 people we had to explain that 10 to 2 meant 10 to 2 to the dentists not the public. Only one couple who showed up at 1:50 pm and said they traveled 80 miles one way complained but they more than made up for all the ones that didn't complain!! They made a scene so much so that someone who had waited over an hour gave the husband her spot. Made me mad but in the end all the dentists stayed overtime to handle everyone on the list including the lady that gave up her spot.

At the end we screened an incredible 158 and 9 were given referrals. That meant, on average, each dentist saw a patient every 4.6 minutes!! Two took a small lunch break with food provided by the world famous Habana Cafe, of course, and my Dr Thee worked straight thru and took his lunch home.

I would like the OCF to send each of my vols a letter and I also plan to get the City to do the same.

I can't wait till next year!!