When Bill Roberts retired in 2010 after 44 years as a Conyers dentist, his passion for the profession didn’t end.
He turned his attention to volunteering his services at home and in northern Mexico, lending a hand in treating scores of people who either could not afford or didn’t have access to proper dental care.
“It’s a service he was happy to provide for people who otherwise would be unable to get that kind of care,” said his daughter, Sarah Barker of Baltimore. “It gave him a lot of joy. He didn’t want to see anybody in pain.”
While volunteering at a free dental clinic offered by Mercy Heart Health Clinic in Conyers on Jan. 26, Dr. Roberts suffered a stroke, his daughter said. He never recovered and died Jan. 30.
A memorial service for Dr. William Roberts, 68, is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday in the chapel at Caldwell & Cowan Funeral Home in Conyers, which is handling arrangements.
Dr. Roberts knew at the age of 8 that he wanted to be a dentist, his only child said. While growing up in Atlanta’s West End, he was fascinated with his own dentist, she said.
He was the eldest of three children born to Newitt and Nell Roberts. He graduated from Southwest High School in Atlanta and entered Oxford College in Oxford, Ga. Afterward, he enrolled at Emory University’s dental school, graduating in 1966.
Dr. Roberts enlisted in the U.S. Army after leaving Emory and served in the Dental Corps, which provided dental care to soldiers destined for Vietnam. He left the Army in 1968 as a captain.
With a loan in hand, he then realized a lifelong dream of opening his own dental practice, on Columbia Drive in Decatur. The office was later moved to Commerce Drive in Conyers.
It was at the Conyers practice that he met his future wife, Cheryl Miles, a native South Carolinian whom he’d hired as a dental hygienist in 1978. They married four years later, and Mrs. Roberts continued as a hygienist up until her husband retired and sold the practice in 2010. The couple would have celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary on Feb. 13.
In addition to filling in for fellow dentists, Dr. Roberts and his wife volunteered regularly at Mercy Heart, a clinic serving low-income and uninsured residents of Rockdale County.
The Robertses also volunteered in Piedras Negras, Mexico, making five trips there with members from Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Stone Mountain. The most recent trip was last summer.
“They both cared deeply about their patients,” Mrs. Barker said of her parents. The biggest challenge, she recalled her father saying, was having “patience with patients.”
Dr. Dan Hodges, a Conyers dentist, said Dr. Roberts was his mentor when he was fresh out of dental school in 1983, and they had been colleagues and friends ever since.
Dr. Hodges also picked up where his longtime friend left off. When The Atlanta Journal-Constitution caught up with him Thursday, he was at Mercy Heart in the same spot Dr. Roberts was exactly a week earlier, treating the same patient Dr. Roberts was treating when he suffered his stroke. Dr. Hodges said the patient helped Dr. Roberts to a chair immediately after he was stricken.
Another patient, Valerie Weston of Conyers, said Dr. Roberts was the family dentist for 37 years and that it was just like him to be helping others toward the end of his life.
“There will never be anybody like him,” Mrs. Weston said.
In addition to his wife and daughter, Dr. Roberts is survived by two daughters from a previous marriage, Andrea Hammond of Covington and Heather Moss of Hiawassee; a sister, Jenell Roberts of Stone Mountain; a brother, John Roberts of Loganville; and three grandchildren, Colton Drew Barker of Baltimore, and Hunter Moss and Kolby Moss, both of Hiawassee.
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