BLANCHARD — Mark Hughes got his Christmas wish early this year: His two front teeth.

In fact, the 62-year-old handyman got a whole new set of pearly whites, thanks to an outpouring of support from folks in the Blanchard community he calls home.

It was a gift the U.S. Navy veteran needed desperately but couldn’t afford.

Plagued by receding gums, Hughes began losing his teeth a few years ago.

“They just started breaking off,” he says.

The pain became so unbearable that at one point, Hughes doused a cotton ball in whiskey and yanked out one of his teeth with a pair of pliers.

That’s when Chris Bishop, also of Blanchard, stepped in.

The community activist had hired Hughes as a fix-it man for various household projects when she became aware of his dental plight.

“When I heard about the pliers, I knew I had to do something,” said Bishop, who oversees the Blanchard community newsletter and is former vice president of the bustling Blanchard Community Center near the Kootenai/Bonner county line.

So she sent out an email blast. The response, Bishop says, was overwhelming.

“Right away, I started getting donations from $10 to $100,” she said. “All I had to do was send out an email and say I needed help and I got immediate responses.”

Bishop noted that donations also came from the neighboring communities of Spirit Lake and Newport and even Sandpoint and Coeur d’Alene.

Hughes, who recently lost his wife, received his new dentures in mid-December following 10 extraction appointments and an oral surgery.

Bishop estimates the dental work at $2,400. Virtually all of it was covered by donations, except for a small portion that Bishop and her husband, Don, a retired teacher with the Post Falls School District, kicked in.

Although he served in the Navy from 1975-79, Hughes wasn’t eligible for dental insurance from the Veterans Administration, Bishop said, because he didn’t serve in contemporary conflicts.

“The VA didn’t take care of him,” she said. “He had no insurance, medical or dental, for a long time; hadn’t been to a doctor in years. He’d fallen through the cracks.”

Hughes said thanks to his new teeth, he no longer has to puree all his food.

“The first thing I ate was pizza — supreme pizza. It was fantastic,” he said. “I was actually able to chew on the peppers and onions for the first time and it was delicious.”

With his new teeth comes a new outlook on life, he said. He recently landed a job at the Post Falls Walmart and is able to drive himself with a car donated by the Bishops.

“I’m definitely smiling a lot more. So many people pulled together to make this happen,” the Blanchard man said. “There are a lot of nice people out here in the woods.”