Bruce A. Hillemeyer

1961

Flossmoor Grade School

College: U of Iowa Honors program--B.A. (SAE fraternity).

Grad school at U.of IL College of Dentistry at Medical Center in Chicago--B.S.D. & D.D.S. (while in dental school, I worked summers in research and took some additional grad courses in Psychology. I was active in student politics as Pres of Med Center student body, Union Board, my dental fraternity and the Inter-fraternity Council)

Then, in an attempt to avoid Nam and the draft, I joined the Navy as a dentist and spent almost all of it in Australia--the only dentist for 250 miles located at a USN Communications station on the west coast where I also took care of Aussies and got to travel a lot. Many USN medicos went to Nam's Mash units with the marines--I was lucky!

After two years in the USN, I got out in Australia and spent another two years traveling around the world by tramp steamer and backpack. I spent time in Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Borneo, Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Thailand, Burma, India, Nepal, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, and virtually all of (then western) Europe and Scandinavia.

Finally returning home, I only had a dental license in IL and so started out practicing dentistry with a dental school classmate in Peoria with the intention to go somewhere more adventurous--although I was, by then, truly sick of backpack living! Dental insurance was just starting to be offered by big companies like Caterpillar (world headquartered in Peoria) and so I was immediately busier than all get out--and I met my wife, Karen, and decided that the future looked pretty good in Peoria and we could travel out from there--which we've done often.

I ended up starting a dental group with my classmate (and later bought him out) which got to 5 offices and 12 dentists with a computer support company. I also started a dental insurance company and signed up Caterpillar salaried employees and their families and we were off to the races!

I was actively involved in the community in Peoria--which is easy to do in a "smaller" town (metro pop is 380,000), but could get to Chicago easily enough to visit often too. I was on my kid's school board, health care and education boards, country club and Rotary boards, museum and historical boards among others, and held many positions including President of the Peoria District Dental Society. I also volunteered free dentistry at the health department and helped build a school in the high Andes in Bolivia after I retired from active dentistry in 2006.

I am happy to say that Karen and I have four great grown children; twin daughters Kim and Keri (one was high school Prom and one Homecoming Queen), and two equally advantaged sons (pride is a terrible thing...so consider that I am very biased). All of our kids have one or more children; we now have nine grandkids. Six live in the western Chicago suburbs (with one on the way) and three in the San Diego area. We moved in 2020 to the outer Chicago western suburb of Sandwich to live in a Lake House and still visit our previous wintering location in the Palm Springs, CA area to be close to our San Diego family too.

Life has been good to me and I credit H-F and the wonderful communities we grew up in to have been a factor in that success. It offered all of us the positive life experiences (and anything-is-possible attitude) as well as strong teachers and a good educational foundation that made it more likely that we could succeed--and "be lucky" too.....Go Vikings!

General dentist