ICYMI: Crowd Funding Campaign for Somerville Artist's Dental Surgery Raises More Than $18,000

One of Somerville’s many eccentric residential characters has become an unlikely crowd-funding beneficiary.

Unbeknownst to him, friends of Kirk “Skunk” Tegelaar, 45, established a GoFundMe on his behalf that’s already raised more than $18,000 since its establishment a mere three months ago according to the Boston Globe.

The sorce notes that as a member of both the Artisan Asylum and a “funk-busting” bicycle gang known as SCUL, “Skunk” is more than fairly well-known around Somerville.

Tegelaar, who works in Watertown, isn’t terminally ill or hoping to record an album like a boilerplate recipient of online donation dollars. Instead, he’s merely long-overdue to get his teeth fixed.

“He isn’t smooth, he’s not flashy, and he doesn’t have a particularly eloquent way with words,” Tegelaar’s nine-year confidant Bathsheba Grossman told the Globe. “But he’s a hell of a nice guy. ... If anyone deserves this, it’s him.”

The fund was established by Patrick McCarthy, a dental anesthesiologist who first encountered “Skunk” when he needed a last-minute welder to fix a mobile practice cart.

Curious professional that he is, McCarthy asked what was wrong with Skunk’s blatantly deformed teeth.

Skunk explained the troubles began when a change of living situation as a teenager caused him to lose his dental insurance, before he could get his braces taken off.

The Globe goes into gritty detail, noting that the then 14-year-old Skunk resorted to removing the braces himself.

“That was my first real experience working with metal,” he told the source.

Unable to afford the substantial cost of repairing his teeth, the condition of Skunk’s mouth continued to deteriorate over the years. While he’s been able to undergo an occasional root canal and other surgeries in exchange for website design or welding jobs, McCarthy writes that even with dentists working for free, the materials and lab expenses needed to repair his friend’s grin could amount to $30,000.

“Without your help, Skunk will lose his teeth sooner than a young person should,” wrote McCarthy on the GoFundMe site. “As a man in his early 40s with the energy of a 20-year-old, Skunk has a bright future. He is one of the last guys who would ask for your help, so we decided we would ask for him.”

Image Credit: GoFundMe set up by Caroline Chun McCarty.