Printer Friendly Version - Carolyn Blicharz: It’s Time

Valley Regional High School grad Carolyn Blicharz DMD is happy to be back in familiar territory practicing alongside her dad, Dr. Ernest Reamer. As for the dimples on her cheeks that people have remarked on ever since she was a child, patients sitting in her dental chair rarely comment. “Usually I’m wearing a mask,” she explains. Photo by Rita Christopher/The Courier

Carolyn Blicharz has found a way to be a part of a public speaking contest without having to open her mouth. She is the timekeeper at the upcoming Four-Way Test Contest sponsored by the Rotary Clubs of Essex, Deep River, and Chester on Saturday, Feb. 23 at 4 p.m. in the third-floor auditorium at Richard H. Smith Town Hall in Deep River. The event is free and open to the public.

“We hope people come; we encourage family, friends, educators to be there,” she says.

All Carolyn has to do at the Four-Way Test Contest is hold up a time card showing every speaker how much of their seven-minute allotted time they have used. Speeches cannot be less than five minutes or more than seven. And she has some practice. Carolyn was the timekeeper last year at the local Rotary Clubs’ Four-Way Test program, too.

The Four-Way Test requires each speaker, all students at Valley Regional High School, to apply four criteria to a topic of their own choice: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

Before the speech contest on Feb. 23, another Rotary project will be on display from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Tri-Town Youth Services at 56 High Street in Deep River. The three clubs renovated two rooms at facility for multipurpose community use. Each Rotary club contributed $1,000 to the renovation supplemented by a $6,000 grant from a Rotary district fund. Rotary members also contributed their own labor to painting and construction on the project.

Carolyn became a member of Rotary when she came back to Essex to join her father, Dr. Ernest Reamer, in his dental practice. He, too, is a Rotarian.

“I am one of the youngest, and there are fewer females, but they are all a great group of people,” she says.

Carolyn also is her club’s representative to the meetings of Interact, the Valley Regional High School group sponsored by the three local Rotary clubs.

She did her undergraduate college work at Bates College in Maine, majoring in biochemistry, and then went on to work as a laboratory researcher in Boston. She stayed at the research job, breeding mice for several experiments involving diabetes, for more than a year, but it didn’t take her that long to recognize she wanted something else.

“After three weeks, I realized it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t see the end results,” she says.

The best part of the laboratory job, according to Carolyn, was that it helped her make the decision to go to dental school at the University of Connecticut. She had always had an interest in dentistry. As a child, when her father had an emergency on weekends, he would sometimes bring Carolyn and her two brothers to the office. The boys played in the waiting room, but Carolyn would help her father with routine dental tasks like suction.

Dental care was very much a part of the family routine. Her father brushed and flossed her teeth until she was 13. It was only when he stopped that she got her first cavity. She still talks about the importance of flossing.

When told that a reporter used the plastic flossing picks, she gave a modified approval.

“Better than nothing, but they only get about 60 percent of what’s there. They can’t bend around teeth,” she says. According to Carolyn, old fashioned dental floss is best.

When Carolyn started as a professional in her father’s office, she worked three days a week. Now with her daughter Emily, 7 ½, at Essex Elementary School and her son Ben, 5, at preschool, she has increased her schedule to four days. Carolyn’s husband Drew is an environmental specialist at Eversource.

“It takes a village. My husband is amazing; my mom helps; there’s a babysitter,” she says, adding one other important fact: “I have a very understanding boss.”

Carolyn is asked regularly about what it is like to work in a professional setting with her father. She is enthusiastic about it.

“I love working with him. He is an amazing dentist and it is a very special relationship,” she says.

But there is no confusion about which member of the Reamer family is Dr. Reamer.

Carolyn knows that for some, there mere mention of the dentist’s office elicits a groan.

“I try to be as pleasant as possible. I tell them I’m here to help and to take a break when they need one,” she says.

She tries to calm apprehension inspired by phobic memories of dental visits gone by.

As she looks forward to the Four-Way Test Contest, Carolyn is glad she is the timekeeper and not a speaker.

“Public speaking is really not my thing,” she says. “I think for anyone to present a speech, it is really a tribute to their character.”

The Rotary clubs of Chester, Deep River, and Essex hold their annual Four-Way Test Contest on Saturday, Feb. 23, at 4 p.m. at the Richard H. Smith Town Hall, Deep River. The event is free and open to the public.

The public is invited to see the renovation conducted at Tri-Town Youth Services, 56 High Street, Deep River, by the Rotary clubs of Chester, Deep River, and Essex on Saturday, Feb 23, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.