It was a warm spring morning, and Shaunell was reclining in a padded chair inside an office on Roanoke Avenue in East Chattanooga. She was calm. She felt the anxiety she had long carried finally begin to slip away. At last, she could smile—and relax.

To know that she was sitting in a dentist’s examination chair did not hamper Shaunell’s mood. Today, waiting in the dentist’s office didn’t bother her. In fact, it made her feel more at ease because she was being fitted for partial dentures, a procedure that for years she had been unable to afford.

It was not an increase in Shaunell’s income or new insurance coverage that made this service possible. Rather, it was the dentist who volunteers during his lunch hour at the Dr. William Roy Mercy Dental Clinic who brought restoration to her life. Because of the time he gives freely gives to the clinic, Shaunell can grin without embarrassment.

“It took about 10 years off of her—pushed her lips out and really transformed her whole appearance,” says Allison Taylor, RDA, CP, the clinic’s coordinator. “She’s a changed woman.”

Taylor, who has served at the clinic for over a decade, knows how basic dental work can dramatically impact someone’s life. She believes that in the dental profession, offering gospel hope to the oppressed can take the shape of six new teeth.

This hope turned Shaunell’s gloom to gleam. “I smile more,” she says. “I smile a lot more.”