Joe Forgey’s Bequest Thanks Butler for Helping a Farm Boy Become a Dentist
When Joe Forgey ’70 was a young boy working with his dad on the family farm just 60 miles north of Butler’s campus, his dad continually reminded him that revered Bulldog basketball coach Tony Hinkle was born right across the creek and grew up on the Deer Creek farm next door. Whether they were baling hay or mucking out the cow barn or slopping the pigs, it was Tony Hinkle this and Butler University that and Bulldog basketball just about all day long.
Not surprisingly, Joe tried to make the Butler basketball team as a walk-on in the fall of 1966, though he never got off the freshman bench. But what he did get was a stellar education that launched his career as a pediatric dentist, plus a fanatic love of Butler basketball that even resulted in a Bulldog tattoo when Joe was in his 60s (more on that later). In gratitude for all things Butler, Joe recently added a bequest in his will to the annual gifts he has been making to the Butler athletic program for many years.
“Family and religion and Butler basketball, those are the top three things in my life,” says Joe, who is still fixing kids’ teeth two days a week after running his Noblesville dental practice for the past 42 years. “Butler pointed me in the right direction and has made my personal quality of life much, much better. As I was looking back on where I had been, I knew I had to make a more significant gift. And for me it made sense to do it through my will.”
Joe has designated a dollar amount for Butler but said he may increase the bequest if his investments keep growing. The money will go to the athletic department with no restrictions on its use. Joe’s attorney helped revise the will, but Joe said it was neither expensive nor difficult.
“I did it all on the phone,” Joe says. “Truthfully, changing your will is no big deal.”
What has always been a big deal to Joe is basketball. He did finally meet Coach Hinkle during his freshman year, and they chatted about farm life in Deer Creek. After realizing he was not going to make it as a player, Joe decided to become a basketball coach—and declared an education major at Butler so he could be a science teacher while coaching. But an interesting thing happened in those science classes.
“Because of Butler’s small class sizes, I was in classes with predental and premed students,” Joe explains. “Associating with those students and learning from those professors brought out the best in me, and I was doing so well that I decided to apply to dental school.”
He particularly complimented two of his professors: James W. Berry ’56, who taught biology at Butler for 30 years and founded Butler’s widely regarded Undergraduate Research Conference; and Roger W. Boop, ’62 M.S. ’65, an education professor and dean from 1968 to 2012.
With the war in Vietnam still raging in 1970, Joe had to delay entry to dental school; he enlisted in the National Guard and spent a year at Fort Leonard, Missouri, before he could join the Indiana University School of Dentistry. He graduated in 1975, did a two-year residency in pediatric dentistry at Riley Children’s Hospital, and opened the practice he still runs.
All the while he was indoctrinating his five children with his love of Butler, including waking them up for school in the morning by singing, “We’ll sing the Butler war song, we’ll give a fighting cry; we’ll fight the Bulldog battle, Bulldogs ever do or die.”
Two of his kids took it to heart: Daughter Jill graduated from Butler in 1999, running cross-country for the Bulldogs and marrying fellow grad Pat Moor. Son Casey earned an M.B.A. from Butler in 2016. A few years earlier, Joe’s kids “repaid” him for the wakeup songs with a tattoo challenge.
“They were treating me to the Daytona 500 in 2009 and while there we happened to walk by a few tattoo parlors,” Joe recalls. “I had always been rather strict with the kids about that: No tattoos. One of my sons asked what it would take for me to get a tattoo. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘If Butler goes to the Final Four I will get a Bulldog on my shoulder.”
One year later he was in a tattoo parlor in Noblesville with 40 people watching and his wife Cynthia holding his hand (“I don’t like to be poked,” says the dentist). And the story grew from there, as it was featured on local television and Joe was enticed to tell it to a Butler reception of 300.
“Everybody was saying, ‘Dr. Joe got a tattoo!’ ” he laughs. “I had buyer’s remorse, but it did prove that I am one crazy Bulldog fan. Attending the Final Four with my team—twice—was beyond my wildest dreams.”
He and Cynthia went to many Butler games at Hinkle Fieldhouse before she succumbed to cancer nine years ago. Now Joe usually takes some of his dozen grandkids; he maintains four season tickets and is a member of the Bulldog Club for financial supporters of the athletic department. He also volunteers his time for Butler, speaking to the predental students and lecturing for the education department about school boards; he was recently elected to the Noblesville School Board, on which Cynthia previously served.
“I love my school,” he says with a touch of Butler pride in his voice. “I was an average student, but I had a strong work ethic learned from my dad on the farm; that and great professors got me through. I came to Butler with a dream of being a basketball player … and I left with a first-class education and a direction in life. You can’t ask for more than that.”
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