By By LYDIA GRIMES – Features writer
Donna Dozier Bush practically grew up at her father and grandfather's dental practice, so it made sense that she chose dental hygiene as her career.
Bush, a dental hygienist since 1987, is the daughter of B.D. Dozier and granddaughter of C.A. Dozier, both of whom practiced in Brewton.
Bush began hanging around the dentist office at an early age and grew up in that atmosphere. It was sort of inevitable that she would follow in the footsteps of her father and grandfather, even though she had no interest in becoming a dentist herself. She is the first person a dental patient sees on entering the dentist office, except for the receptionist. It is her job to clean patients' teeth and teach them the proper way to care for them so they might last longer.
Bush grew up in Brewton, along with two brothers and a sister. She attended school in the Brewton City School System and graduated from T.R. Miller High School in 1983. She spent a lot of her childhood in the dentist office, where her grandfather had practiced and where her father practiced.
She was also very involved in school by playing clarinet in the band and as flag captain in her senior year. She describes herself as an average student in academics. Some of her favorite subjects in school were the art classes.
After she graduated from high school, she attended Auburn University for about a year pursuing a commercial art degree. Her grandfather had graduated in 1918 from Southern Dental College in Atlanta, whose name had changed to Emory University when her father graduated in 1943. Her grandfather, Dr. B.D. Dozier, set up his practice in Brooklyn but later moved to Brewton and set up his office upstairs over what used to be the Fair Store at 131 St. Joseph Avenue.
She not only was attending school; she was also working and getting on-the-job training at a Pensacola dentist's office. She attended school in the daytime and worked with the dentist at night. She graduated from PJC in 1987 and came back to Brewton to work with her dad and stayed there until he retired a few months later. She worked with several dentists in Brewton and Monroeville until Dr. Keith Miller came to town in 1991. She has been at Dr. Miller's office ever since.
She also got married in 1991. She married Whitney Bush from Jay, Fla., on Dec. 1, 1991, which was her birthday. She and her husband are the parents of Dillon, who is 13, and Logan, who is 5 years old. Logan holds the distinction of having been born on Sept. 11, 2001, a date that everyone remembers as the terrorist attack on New York and Washington, D.C.
Bush enjoys her job working at Miller's office and she wants everyone to know that she has plenty of help from another hygienist, Leeann Cushman. They clean teeth, take X-rays and teach people how to take care of their teeth.
Bush also likes to be outdoors. She and her family have some Tennessee Walkers and they enjoy horseback riding. She still has the horse she rode in high school. She says she is not anyone special and in fact is very ordinary.
Bush knows she is not exactly the person most people want to see - but she hopes patients will be kind.