Dr. Harvey Schneider, Dentist

Historical records of early Sandy dentists are sparse, but it appears that a Dr.Ott

of Gresham had a dental practice in Sandy for two days a week around 1910 and Dr.

Sture was a full-time dentist here for a time in about 1920.

Harvey Schneider was a local boy that had grown up in the Lusted area where

he fired a railroad locomotive on the Bull Run line that shuttled in materials for the dam,

powerhouse tunnels and flumes that were being built in about 1910. He also worked for

a time as a bookkeeper at the Proctor-Straus sawmill in Sandy. Harvey Schneider came

from pioneer stock. His grandfather, Thomas Porterfield Jack, came over the Oregon

Trail via Barlow Road in 1847 and his grandmother, who would marry Thomas Jack,

arrived in another wagon train in 1852.

Harvey later attended Dental School, became licensed, then practiced dentistry

in Pendleton, Pilot Rock, and Brookings. In 1926, he came to Sandy and established a

dental practice that lasted 40 years! Schneider could take care of all dental needs,

fillings, extractions and dentures.

As a young boy, I had my share of visits to his office, one of which I remember

vividly. At the time, I needed to have a badly impacted wisdom tooth extracted. He didn’t

usually give a pain-killer for fillings but he may have given me something for this. He

proceeded to cut into the gum until he could get a good grip on the tooth; then, with my

head in the vice-like grip of his left arm, he gave a series of tugs and jerks until the

stubborn tooth came out. My immediate self-diagnosis was that I now had at least a

compound skull-fracture plus a broken jawbone, but this diagnosis proved to be

inaccurate as he soon sewed up the bleeding gum and sent me on my way with

instructions to “take some aspirin if you have any pain”. Today, that type of extraction

would be called “dental surgery” with several assistants hovering around, a ton of

paperwork, and a bill of more than a thousand dollars. I don’t recall what his bill was but

I seem to remember that during the Depression, he charged $1.00 for a regular filling

and maybe $1.50 for a larger one. His son Dean remembered he often accepted farm

produce in payment of a bill.

Dr. Schneider always wore a suit and tie and always was very professional. He

was civic-minded and was a long-time member of the Sandy Grade School Board of

Directors. He served as Sandy City Recorder from ‘93 through 1938.

“Doc”, as he was always called, was noted for his dry sense of humor. Once,

when asked why he charged so much less than other dentists, he said that if he

charged less, then if his patient didn’t pay the bill, he (Doc) “wouldn't lose so much.” His

son Keith has inherited his father’s humor.

My father, who had a blacksmith shop in Sandy when he was 21 in 1894, said

that he pulled a few teeth at times. With no dentists available, people with an aching

tooth had to get someone to twist it out with some sort of turn-key which often broke the

tooth or left roots that caused gum infections. My dad thought that was needless and

used a forceps and pulled the tooth straight out and bragged that he never left any

roots. His dental chair was probably an upside-down empty nail-keg and a nearby

saloon was handy to provide an anesthetic.

Well, I guess he never killed anyone!

Material sourced from Hometown Sandy Oregon by Phil Jonsrud, copyright 2011

by Sandy Historical Society, pp. 36-38.