Kenneth Burson travels around the world volunteering his dental skills and services to those who would not otherwise be able to afford dental work.
My name is… Kenneth Burson
Dentist, traveler, community outreach enthusiast
By: Stephanie Mason
Finding a way to Denver
I am from Omaha, Nebraska. My dad was a pilot in the Air Force. I went to Creighton University for my undergrad for dentist school. At Creighton, I met some Denver friends and that really drew me out here. I joined on with the management group Pacific Dental Services and they gave me the opportunity to own my first practice in Highlands Ranch. But I moved and now have my second practice in Lone Tree. Now I own Lone Tree Dentists and Orthodontics. I am a general dentist, so I do cosmetics, implants, dentures and anything an adult needs that is not a specialty.
I got into dentistry because I liked to work with my hands and I like to work with people. I also wanted to run a business.
Community outreach
I like getting involved in the community. I donate once a quarter to the homeless shelter to do dentistry there. I run coat drives, sock drives, pet toys for the Dumb Friends League and toy drives for the children’s hospital. My mom and dad, since we were kids, have always made us volunteer our time. My grandmother gave me a quote that I live by. She said, “If you can count your blessings, you can be a blessing for others.”
Once or twice a year, I will go overseas. I have been to Guatamala, Ethiopia and Fiji. In Ethiopia, the rich are poor and the poor are extremely poor. People walk miles every day just to get water. We go over there to do not only dentistry, but to work with Charity:Water to help build wells.
My favorite shirt
When we were in Fiji, we had seen a thousand patients in three days. People would travel for three days to get to us. The people were singing us this farewell song and there was so much positivity in this culture. I had taken out a little girl’s tooth. She had been crying for a year-and-a-half because she couldn’t afford to go to the dentist. When we were leaving, this guy just came zipping up on a bike.
He gets in line and starts singing while he was crying. After the song, he and the translator came over and he gave me a shirt. He said through the translator that he bought it for me because I helped his daughter who cried herself to sleep for so long because of the pain in her tooth. He told me that last night was the first night she had slept without crying. He got me the shirt to say thank you.
The translator started crying. She said that she had seen the shirt for sale and it cost $25. He makes only $7 a month.
