Name: Robert Lee Buchanan III (Third – Triple – Trip)
Occupation: Dentist
First Job: Construction in the summer in High School
Worst Job: I had a construction Job in downtown Charleston when I was in dental school. They were gutting an old building facing King Street. My roommate and I came home the first day and all you could see was our eyes and teeth. We were coughing up black stuff.
We quit after 2 days.
Greatest career challenge: Running a business where you are managing a staff and trying to get everyone on the same page.
Role model: My dad.
Happiest when: My wife and kids are happy.
What you do to relax: Lately there is not a lot of time to relax. When I do I like to try to find some quiet in the house and try to read.
Trait you most deplore in others: Arrogance and disingenuity.
Career advice: Be true to yourself.
Love advice: Effective communication.
Greatest weakness: Not the most effective communicator at times.
What no one knows about you: I used to do a lot of pottery.
What makes you insecure: To some extent everybody is worried a little about what others think about them, but that is really out of your control.
What is on your bucket list: There are a lot of unusual places I would like to go like Vietnam and Cuba.
What motivates you: Knowing that I can get better.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years: Not much changed. In 20 years will be interesting. I don’t see myself as retired, but to have slowed down more.
Trip Buchanan is Bella’s first repeat Fella.
After completing dental school in Charleston, he returned to Aiken. He joined Dr. Garnet’s practice on Greenville Street in 2007 and was asked to be a Bella Fella the same year. Dr. Garnet had started the practice in 1974, and they worked together for 10 years before Dr. Garnet retired and Trip took over the business. It has been Trip Buchanan Signature Dentistry for the last 4 years.
When asked how people reacted the first time he was Bella Fella, Trip laughed and said that he went over to eat at his parents house for dinner one night and his mom had framed it and put it on the wall.
One of the most fascinating things about this month’s Bella Fella was Trip’s dental mission trips. He went to Venezuela and Honduras as a student, and his trip to Uganda was his first as a licensed dentist. He sent me an excerpt from an accounting of his adventure.
“One Sunday we went to church. It was an open air church with primitive benches for pews. Like a lot of the churches we went in to work, one corner had primitive handmade instruments. There wasn’t a set time to start, people just started showing up and singing and as people heard they came and joined in until the singing got louder and louder. People would go pick up an instrument and start playing beautiful African rhythms and beats, the voices harmonized, and when the church was full the preacher quieted the noise to introduce and welcome the mozungos, which is what they called white people. People didn’t bring money to the offering, they brought what they had. Chickens, beans or veggies from their gardens, someone brought in a really nice stick of sugar cane. I felt just about every emotion I had ever experienced hit me all at once, but almost as if it was a new emotion. I almost started crying. The tears accumulated in my eyes but by some miracle of molecular cohesion they didn’t fall. Had the slightest breeze blown through the wide arched brick fenestrations throughout the church, the seal would have broken and they would have poured out. Maybe I should have let them go because I started to get that headache that you get when you try to fight it. They weren’t tears of joy or happiness, tears of sorrow, awe, or helplessness. They weren’t tears of shame or guilt, of peace or solitude. They were tears that originated from a raw combination of every emotion I had ever felt, with something else unexplainably present.
Some say that’s the Holy Spirit.”
~ Trip Buchanan, 2010
