It was a beautiful day in the summer of 1947. The temperature and humidity were both high in the nineties, typical of New Jersey summer days. My mother decided to take my baby brother and me for a walk around the block. My brother Roy was nine months old and I was four and a half. Roy was in a baby carriage, quiet and probably asleep from the motion of the carriage. I was walking or running as any active four year old would be.
In those days we never locked the door to the house, especially when just taking a walk around the neighborhood. Mother and I had just turned the corner from our street onto Spring Street when we met our neighbor lady walking her dog Smokey. She was the wife of our dentist and they lived just a few doors further up Spring Street from where we met. This lady faithfully walked their Alaskan husky twice a day. Mother stopped and the two women engaged in a friendly conversation.
I was jumping and running around in circles and apparently spooked or angered Smokey because suddenly he jumped up and bite my right cheek. I screamed and began running a fast as I could around the corner and down our street toward home. It must have been a sight, my little four year old legs scampering full speed down the street and mother running with the carriage after me.
Our House
In that moment, a series of fortunate things happened almost at once. Our next door neighbor Mr. Barton was a truck driver and had decided to stop home for lunch that day. He had just parked his truck in front of his house and was exiting the cab when he looked up and saw us running toward our house. Immediately he realized something was terribly wrong as he heard my screaming and saw mother in a full sprint. He called his wife and she emerged from her house as I was rounding the corner of our house toward our side door.
I ran past both of them, pulled the side door of our house open, bolted through the kitchen and into the bathroom. I climbed onto the edge of the bathtub, leaned over the sink and twisted my head in front of the mirror. I looked at my image in the mirror and saw my teeth through the gaping hole in my cheek. A large flap of skin was hanging down from my face and blood seemed to be everywhere. Before I knew it I was in my mother’s arms.
She came into the house right behind me; having passed my brother off to Mrs. Barton’s waiting arms. Mother took a clean moistened face cloth and placed it over my mangled cheek carefully placing the flap of flesh back to it proper position. Then out of the house we went.
My mother had no car and didn’t drive. Mr. Barton had his car waiting and whisked us away heading to our doctor’s office a few miles away. As we left, Mrs. Barton took Roy inside her house and called our doctor to fill him in on our pending arrival.
We arrived at Dr. DeBell’s office some twenty minutes or so later. It was in a section of his residence in Passaic, the town just next to ours. Dr. DeBell was our family doctor, but he was also engaged in plastic surgery research, a relatively young specialty in 1947. He took me from my mother’s arms and into his surgery room. I don’t know if he sedated me, but I learned later that he performed some minor surgery along the margins of the torn flap and “sutured” it with what eventually became known as butterfly bandages. The tear was a long arc the general shape of the dog’s snout. The doctor used a single standard stitch to close a puncture wound from the dog’s lower canine tooth. I was released to my mother shortly thereafter and Mr. Barton drove us back home.
When my dad came home that evening from work, my mother had a real wild story to tell.
Allan before the bite
By the grace of God, the surgery and unique bandaging along with the follow up visits to Dr. DeBell, my wounds healed without a scar, save for a small pock mark where the doctor had to use a standard stitch on the puncture wound. The amazing success of the treatment caused the doctor to take pictures of my healed face to accompany his report to the Plastic Surgery Society.
Turning Point
This experience created a lifelong fear of dogs. During my years as a newspaper delivery boy, and at other times growing up, I suffered attacks by dogs and subsequent dog bites. One large dog even jumped through a window to attack me. None of them were as severe as this first one, but I gained a great respect for dogs.
On a more positive note, I witnessed the extraordinary measures God goes to in order to care for those He loves. Our neighbor’s unusual return home for lunch coupled with the precise timing of his arrival enabling him to instantly fulfill our critical need to get to the doctor made all the difference. The meticulous choreography of the right people in the precise place and at the perfect time during those thirty minutes of my life I can only attribute to kind and gracious God.
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