A Century of Care: The Tribble family’s devotion to healing, teaching, and scientific discovery

More than 100 years have passed, yet dental students are still learning microbiology from the Tribble family. 

When Northen Orr Tribble, MD, returned from serving as a battlefield surgeon in World War I and Red Cross physician in Eastern Europe, he settled down in Georgia and joined the faculty of Atlanta Southern Dental College, teaching future dentists about bacteria.

His great niece, Gena D. Tribble, PhD, started her own career as a microbiologist, unaware that she was following in his footsteps until she found an archived college yearbook from 1922.   

“It was quite a shock,” says Gena, Associate Professor in the Department of Periodontics and Dental Hygiene at UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry. “My father had told me that Northen was a physician and taught at the dental college, but I never imagined we both specialized in the same field.”

She also knew from family lore that Northen’s wife, Marion Stevens Tribble, DMD, graduated from Tufts University in 1916—an era when women rarely attended college—and joined the American Red Cross a year later.

“She traveled to France and worked at a Red Cross hospital for orphans,” Gena says. “There were a lot of children who had dental problems and oral infections.”

After the war, Marion went to Serbia, a devastated country with large numbers of orphans and displaced children. She helped set up schools, hospitals to treat malnutrition, and donated sewing machines to help Serbian women gain a means of supporting themselves. Gena found a certificate presented to Marion by a Serbian town in gratitude for her efforts.

“All the people in that town had signed it, and they wrote poems at the bottom,” she says.

It was in Serbia that Marion met Northen, who had also joined the Red Cross after the war. They married in 1920 and settled in Georgia, where Marion joined the faculty of Atlanta Southern Dental College alongside her husband, teaching histology and embryology.

According to Gena, the couple showed signs of what would now be recognized as post-traumatic stress, brought on by their experiences in the war. They kept their house dark and struggled with loud noises.

“I think their experiences in the war were just too much for them,” she says. “But they did hard things to make the world a better place, and even after the war, they kept trying to move the world forward.”

In 2020, Gena and her mother, Mary Tribble, endowed The Marion Stevens, DMD, and Northen Orr Tribble, MD, Oral Microbiome Fund at the School of Dentistry. The fund helps support research into bacteria in the mouth, a crucial aspect of oral health.

Harmful oral bacteria can cause infections, enter the bloodstream, and even infect the heart. But “good” bacteria serve a vital purpose.

“They are an important part of the digestive process, helping convert chemicals in food into metabolites,” Gena says. “They help break down nitrates in leafy green vegetables in a way that’s healthy and safe for the body, and they also produce nitric oxide, which we need to regulate cardiovascular health.”

Nikola Angelov, DDS, R.G. Caffessee Distinguished Professor in Periodontics and Chair of the Department of Periodontics and Dental Hygiene, currently stewards the endowment. He uses the funds from the Tribble Oral Microbiome Fund to support microbiome research, including lab supplies, travel to scientific meetings, and publication costs to share discoveries in scientific journals. 

He also stewards the Tribble Research Fund, a current-use fund that Gena created to provide resources for the immediate support of research in the Department of Periodontics.

“It is often challenging to find funding for our research, especially since many of our faculty are mainly clinicians and don’t have as much time to apply for grants,” Angelov says. “This endowment opens possibilities to us that likely would not otherwise exist.”

Just as Marion and Northen advanced the science and practice of dentistry in their own time, Gena looks forward to seeing the progress at the School of Dentistry in the years ahead.

“Oral health plays such an important role in human wellbeing,” she says. “I am excited for us to keep pressing forward, learning more, and helping people live longer, healthier lives.”