Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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WHERE HAVE YOU GONE? into pre-professional.'" "He let me back in with the stipula- tion that I had my grades re-evaluated each semester." The class schedules were set up where MacAfee had to take only 12 hours in football season, and where his chemistry and physics requirements were met in the summer. In 2003, Dr. Kenneth A. MacAfee, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, was in- vited to deliver the 11th annual Emil T. Hofman lecture in Notre Dame's DeBar- tolo Hall auditorium titled "From Face Mask to Facial Surgery" to physicians from across the country. BEYOND FOOTBALL After completing his graduate work in 1983, MacAfee began his practice in dentistry and oral surgery, taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and lived in Philadelphia for 14 years, prior to the birth of his first child. He returned to Massachusetts and set up his own practice in Waltham. "You can make a change in some- body's life, at least physically, within a matter of hours," said MacAfee of what has gratified him most about his profes- sion. "You reposition jaws and facial bones and make people feel a lot differ- ent about themselves. "The best thing that ever happens is people just coming up to me and saying 'Thank you.' That is very rewarding." These days, MacAfee, who will turn 60 on Jan. 9, has "slowed down" to 11- hour days with more concentration on wisdom team implants and bone grafts. On the side, MacAfee has been active in United Way, Health Volunteers Over- seas, Physicians Fighting Cancer, Homes for Homeless, AIDS Awareness Center and Home for Wayward Children. Celebrating his Silver Anniversary with wife Kathy, MacAfee noted that their son Dalton is now enrolled at West Point as a plebe who plans to play both lacrosse and hockey there, while daugh- ter Keeley is a freshman lacrosse player at Harvard. "We've become a lacrosse family more than football," MacAfee noted. He learned decades ago he could sur- vive without football. ✦ MacAfee — pictured here with his wife, Kathy, his son Dalton and his daughter Keeley — has turned a high school fascination with dentistry into a career as an oral surgeon in Waltham, Mass. PHOTO COURTESY KEN MACAFEE