By Kathy Kurtz Ferrari
Staff Writer
10/1/09
Dr. David Harte has a successful dental practice in Milton, but it was his role as a caring and compassionate father that launched him on a crusade that has had an international impact.
Ten years ago, Harte was instrumental in starting the Masonic Child Identification Program, or CHIP, which assists law enforcement authorities in finding and identifying missing children.
Started by the Milton Lodge of Masons in 1999, the program consists of making documented records of children using dental impressions, video-recorded interviews, fingerprints and DNA samples. The information is presented in a kit to parents for safekeeping in case an emergency need arises.
For years, dental records have been used for identification purposes by law enforcement authorities. Harte, a Mason who has three children of his own, explained that the idea for the CHIP program came to him as the result of his reaction to a disaster involving children.
“It was a direct result of TWA flight 800,” Harte recalled, as he described the effect the 1996 plane crash had on him. The plane was bound to Paris from New York when it exploded shortly after takeoff. “I was just fraught with angst and pain knowing that when that flight went down there were teenagers going to France as part of an exchange program. My kids were a little younger than that, and part of the French Immersion Program here. And whenever I heard that the last two kids to be identified took one year … that’s when I came up with the idea that we really need something in America for fast identification. And that was the idea of the tooth prints, which virtually gives the answer in a number of hours.”
Little did he know that his idea, first implemented in Milton, would launch an international model. The CHIP program is now being used in 29 states and Canada, and expanding rapidly. Interest is also growing in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. More than 1.9 million children have been documented through the CHIP program overall, and in collaboration with the Amber Alert program – the nationwide alert system notifying the public when a child goes missing – hundreds of children have safely been recovered.
“It’s an international problem, with lost and missing kids. Every week it’s in the news. We really have made a phenomenal difference in the problem and it started right here in Milton, Mass.,” Harte stated.
Currently he serves as the international spokesman for CHIP. Why does he have such a passion for the cause?
“Because I’m a dad and a dentist,” he explained.
Between 1999 and 2002, every public school child in Milton was documented by Mason volunteers. The first-ever child documented by CHIP was Harte’s daughter, Kim, who had her tooth impression done by former Boston Red Sox pitcher Jim Lonborg, who now is a dentist on the South Shore.
Once again this year, the CHIP program will be featured at ¡Celebrate Milton!, when volunteers from the Milton Masons, along with representatives from law enforcement and area dentists, will offer the program to residents free of charge. The event will be held at Milton High School, 25 Gile Road, on Saturday, Oct. 3, from noon to 4 p.m. Kimberly Harte, who is now 22 years old, will also be in attendance as part of the 10th anniversary. She is studying to be a dentist at the University of New Hampshire.
According to Milton Mason Mark Whipple, this year’s coordinator for the local program, CHIP, will be located in a classroom on the first floor of the high school, where four stations will be set up with cameras for the interview portion. Dentists will be on hand for the tooth impressions, and representatives from the Police Department will assist with the fingerprinting.
Masons recommend that parents update their children’s documents every couple of years, especially if they were under the age of 12 and hadn’t lost all their baby teeth. The Masons also stress the fact that none of the documentation is saved by the organization. Parents are given the complete kit to store in a safe place.
For more information, visit www.mychip.org.