It took penny matches to light the fire of philanthropy for Patricia Cage-Davis. When she was a very young child growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, Cage-Davis helped support her family by selling boxes of matches door to door. While still in grade school, the intrepid youngster traveled alone by bus to sell her matches because every cent helped ease the deprivations of a difficult home life.
It sounds like a story straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. But to Cage-Davis, 81, it was the simple reality of her childhood. “It was all I knew,” she says.
She has chosen to focus on the people who have helped her along the way. As a young child, she encountered many good Samaritans, including a dentist, who was one of the regular customers on her match-selling route. One day he volunteered to clean her teeth and show her how to care for them. She had never used, much less owned, a toothbrush. Cage-Davis says that now – some 75 years later – she still remembers that dentist’s generosity every time she cleans her teeth.
Many years later under very different circumstances, Cage-Davis began searching for a cause that would help children in need and learned about the OHSU School of Dentistry’s Russell Street Clinic. The clinic provides free dental care to low-income and underserved children in the Portland area.
“It was exactly what I was looking for,” says the twice-widowed Cage-Davis. “I wanted to repay the kindness that dentist showed me so many years ago. What he did for me was priceless.”
With her generous support, the Patricia Cage-Davis Endowment was established at the School of Dentistry to help underserved children receive the dental care they need. Her hope is that others will be inspired to support the program as well. In her mind, no child should have to sell matches – and every child deserves good dental care.
“I’ve always thought that if I ever have anything of substance that I would love to help people, particularly children, in some way," she says. "I feel privileged to be able to do so.”
