Philanthropist, Dentist and All-Around Do-Gooder: Meet Mike Thomas

It wasn’t possible for Dr. Mike Thomas to examine your teeth in his a few Mondays ago. It wasn’t that he wasn’t working, because he was.

It was just that he was working in someone else’s office.

Thomas, of , filled in for another Stark County dentist who was under the weather that day. To him, it didn’t seem that extraordinary. But then again, a lot of the philanthropic things the Louisville resident does come with no request for applause. And believe us, there are a lot of things.

Thomas’ values carry over into his work, and one example of that is his willingness to reduce his employees' stressors.

“We have a lot of young mothers here working at the office and occasionally different things come up in their lives and they don’t have a babysitter. So it’s not a problem for one of the young mothers to bring their child here for an afternoon or an entire day. And we just watch the child while the mom continues to work.”

That nursery-type situation goes all the way back to when Thomas started there with his wife Julie, who now runs the dental office at 1437 S. Main St, North Canton. The couple would bring their babies to work because that was the most convenient choice at the time.

“That was neat because we had a little nursery in the basement of the office and people saw my wife going through the pregnancies and could actually go down and see the children that were the result of those pregnancies,” he said. “And so our patients know our children pretty well. A lot of them held them as infants.”

“It’s the ultimate in family dentistry: families working on families.”

Thomas said he always wanted to live and work in Stark County. He would call the Stark County Dental Society once a month while he was a senior in dental school at the Ohio State University, just to make sure he wasn’t missing any job opportunities here. That persistence paid off, and the dental society executive director tipped him off to an opportunity at his current office, which was then under the direction of Dr. Ronald Keilin*.

Keilin was willing to take on the husband-wife dentist duo, and the couple was more than willing to join.

Keilin promised the couple he would transition the practice to them, and they worked under him for eight years, beginning in 1992, before Keilin retired.

Thomas said there were a few advantages to working alongside his wife and under the direction of a longtime dentist.

“One of the biggest advantages was, when a young dentist graduates dental school, they’re not nearly experienced enough to start their own practice, and working with him, he said, ‘You guys try whatever you’d like to try, and if you run into complications, I’ll be there to help you.’”

It seems that Thomas’ employees get that same feeling from him and other employees — that there's help there when they need it. He said one dental hygienist’s home , and she had to miss a day of work. Two other hygienists absorbed her patients, which made the situation a little easier to bear.

“She didn’t feel stressed she had to come to work,” Thomas said. “She knew that there was backup. That feeling of freedom, I think, is valuable.”

Lori Skibicki, bookkeeper for Thomas & Associates, said it’s easy to see Thomas cares about his employees.

“He works with everyone’s schedules, as far as if anyone needs a day off, he’s very accommodating and works around that,” she said.

“He’s just a good guy to work for.”

Who's Dr. Mike Thomas?

Name: Dr. Michael Thomas
Works at: Thomas & Associates, 1421 Portage St. NW, North Canton
Family: Wife Julie and kids Michael, 17, senior at Louisville High School, and Phillip, 14, an eighth-grader at Louisville Middle School
Hometown: Louisville
Accolades and activities: Chairman of Board of Directors at , Stark County Dental Society Executive Committee for 20 years; active in Louisville High School, St. Louis Catholic Church and Louisville Hot Stove Baseball. Thomas & Associates was the first individually owned health care facility to be Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce's Outstanding Business of the Year.
In the works: Thomas plans to help plant trees near the Hoover building entrance in the fall. He'll also be involved in voting for the new president of Stark State College this fall.

*Editor's note: Keilin was misidentified in the original version of this story.