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Note: Dennis McCarthy's column appears Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.
They still ask about him, wondering how Dr. Hale is doing.
"Great," Dr. James Jensvold tells Hale's former patients. "Absolutely great."
It was Jensvold who took in many of his friend's patients in 2005, when the noted oral surgeon walked away from his successful Woodland Hills practice.
He joined the Army to teach young interns at Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio -- the military's level-one trauma center -- how to reconstruct the shattered faces of injured young service members coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
He didn't have to go. As I wrote in a Feb. 15, 2005, column, Hale had just come home after a year's tour in Afghanistan with an Army Reserve MASH unit -- spending 18-hour days digging out pieces of shrapnel and reconstructing shattered jaws.
He was 48, in the prime of his career. He had a wife, two young sons and a successful, private oral surgery practice. Hale was held in such high esteem, the 1,300-member San Fernando Valley Dental Society elected him president.
But he walked away from it all.
When you've lived for a year with soldiers who...