News Long-serving dentist retires
Tributes have been pouring in for a long-serving Goole dentist who has retired after almost 30 years' sterling service.
Praful Modi, who ran the P. Modi dental practice in Clifton Gardens, retired last Monday, June 30, due to ill health.
Mr Modi (66) started his practice in January, 1979 after the departure of the previous dentist Peter Finch.
A new dentist, Dr Gopinath Thota, is now in place and it is understood no patients have been affected.
Mr Modi, who lost his wife Kumi to cancer in October last year, has moved back to Birmingham to be close to his family.
Pauline Overington, the former dental surgery assistant who worked at the practice for 34 years, has also left due to other commitments.
Barbara Goddard, the practice receptionist, said: "Everybody loves Mr Modi - he'll be missed. I've never met such a lovely man."
Mrs Modi was practice manager at Clifton Gardens until ill health took its toll and she had to take early retirement.
Geoff Overington, Pauline Overington's husband and a friend of Mr Modi and his family, said:""This is a sad loss to the town. Praful is a great guy and Mrs Modi was a superb lady - they were a great team.
"She would drop everything to help someone. If someone was in pain she would squeeze them in, no matter what."
Mr Modi, who spoke to the Goole Times from his home in Birmingham, this week paid tribute to the friends he had made in Goole and the loyalty of his patients.
He said: "The years have gone by so quickly owing to ill health and age. The practice has been taken over by a pleasant young dentist in Dr G. Thota. I'm happy that he will soon be working full-time and continue to provide a service and look after all our patients at the Clifton Gardens dental practice.
"I wish him well and wish all our patients the very best. All our patients have given us wonderful support over the years and I shall miss them for sure. To our staff who have been equally loyal, I wish them all the very best."
He added: "When we (Mr Modi and his family) arrived in Goole, my late wife Kumi and I had mixed feelings as to how it would all work out - we need not have worried.
"We found the people of the town so warm and friendly, down-to-earth and so easy to get along with."
Mr Modi, who was a member of Goole Lions Club, had run the practice part-time for the last three years.
During those last few years in Goole he used several of the region's hospitals to get treatment for his wife.
"I would like to thank all the doctors and staff at Goole Hospital, and the Princess Royal and Castle Hill hospitals in Hull, as well as Hull Royal.
"I would also like to express my grateful thanks to our own GP, Dr Mukund Patel. They all helped greatly during my wife's long illness and my own in the past four years.
"I shall certainly miss the friendly Goole town and its wonderful people."
Mr Modi, a grandfather-of-three, fled Uganda in the early 1970s to escape the purge on resident Asian people by the country's despotic former leader Idi Amin.
He and his family - including his brothers, sisters and parents - fled to the UK and initialy settled in Birmingham, before moving to Edinburgh to work in hospitals as a dentist.
Mr Modi worked alongside his wife, who is also a trained dentist, and together they moved back to Birmingham, where they continued to work in hospitals.
After a few years back in the Midlands they moved to Goole, where they opened their own practice in 1979.
Dr Thota's new practice already has a new trainee nurse, Sarah Coper, and in October a second dentist will be in place, by which time the practice will be accepting new NHS patients.
Published on 10th July 2008 in News.
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