Summers in Grand Haven, Mich., were great for Edward Ellis III, D.D.S., M.S. “When I was in high school and college, my summer job was to run the concession stand my father owned at Grand Haven State Park. In fact, I lived in a nice apartment above the concession stand during those months,” he said.
The park is on the western bank of Lake Michigan, which offers a sandy beach during the warmer months and access to a white desert of ice in the winter. It was the perfect vacation hangout, said Dr. Ellis, now a professor and chairman of the Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery (OMS) in the School of Dentistry at the Health Science Center.
In fact, his teens were so relaxing that he had some difficulty picking a major for college. “I really couldn’t decide. Finally, my dad said, ‘Why don’t you become a dentist like your Uncle Joe?’ He was my dentist, and it looked like a good living, so I tried it,” Dr. Ellis said.