Cornelius Silas Stripling, who died at age 82 on Oct. 20, was among the first African-American dentists in Wyoming and Colorado, practicing in Denver for 45 years before retiring to become an award-winning amateur photographer.
The son of a Methodist minister and a home economics teacher, Stripling grew up in Georgia, where he graduated from Savannah State College in 1945. He earned his postgraduate degree from the Harvard University School of Dentistry, paying for tuition and other expenses by working as a waiter.
In 1949, with his freshly minted dental degree, Stripling enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and shortly afterward took charge of the dental clinic at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne.
Some of the 30 men serving under Stripling, then a captain in the newly integrated Air Force, bristled at taking orders from an African-American officer. When Stripling was transferred to Korea, where he supervised dental care for 3,000 Air Force personnel, Koreans gawped at his considerable height as much as at his dark skin.
Upon returning to the U.S., Stripling served as the dental surgeon at Dow Air Force Base and then Tinker Air Force Base.
He opened a private dental practice on York Street in 1957, after being discharged from military service. African-American families in northeast Denver filled his office.
“When I was a student at Wyman Elementary and Whittier Elementary, Dr. Stripling was the dentist everyone went to,” recalled former patient and Denver firefighter Richard Wright.
“That was before desegregation, so everyone went to a black dentist or a black doctor. When you came back to school after seeing him, the other kids would say, ‘Oh, he’s my dentist, too!”‘
Despite his height, Stripling possessed an instinctive gentleness that encouraged patients to trust him.
Because most of his patients saw him only for emergencies – preventive care was rarely an option for them – his reassuring demeanor made an immeasurable difference.
“It was always good to see him, even though you only went when you had a toothache or something was wrong,” Wright explained. “He had a way of making you feel at ease. And gentle hands. Very gentle. He always explained what he was doing, and why, talking right to you when other doctors would talk to your mom.”
Stripling retired from dentistry in 1990. He devoted the newfound spare time to photography, an avocation he took up in 1986.
He specialized in still-life portraits featuring fruits and vegetables that his lens transmuted into studies variously imbued with gravitas and buoyancy.
A study of a yellow rose still dangling from a long stem snapped in half possesses a melancholy beauty.
A photograph of a partly shucked ear of corn, its lustrous silk flung beside it in a come- hither toss, is at once comic and seductive.
Stripling, diagnosed with diabetes late in life, saw photography as a way to exhort others to adopt the nutritious diet he cherished nearly as much as his Methodist faith.
Dismayed by the rising number of overweight patients, fellow church members and others, Stripling became an evangelist preaching the news of a good diet and regular exercise.
He wanted his photographs of fruit and vegetables to look so appealing that people ignored advertisements promoting fried chicken and other fast food.
While Stripling never knew how many converts he won over, he collected a slew of local and national photography awards, including two awards of merit from the New York Institute of Photography. The Blair- Caldwell African-American Research Library owns a collection of his work.
Survivors include stepmother Ruth Stripling of Savannah, Ga.; son Anthony Stripling of Glenn Mills, Pa.; sister Altheia Powell of Denver; daughter Ann-Marie Stripling of Teaneck, N.J.; and three grandchildren.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
