A retired Waynesboro dentist whose lifetime of volunteer work has taken him from South Central Pennsylvania to clinics around the world has received the Rotary Club of Gettysburg’s highest humanitarian honor.
Dr. Robert “Bob” Zimmerman, Waynesboro, was presented with the annual Dwight D. Eisenhower Humanitarian Award during the club’s luncheon on Monday in the ballroom of the Gettysburg Hotel.
The award recognizes individuals for significant humanitarian service, and Zimmerman’s work spans decades of international mission trips, local charity care and community leadership.
Zimmerman has been a member of the Rotary Club of Waynesboro since 1984, he said.
During his opening remarks, Rotary Club of Gettysburg President Chuck Elder noted Gettysburg’s symbolic connection to humanitarianism in the face of conflict, from the Battle of Gettysburg to the legacy of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Elder said the town was an appropriate place to honor Zimmerman’s life of service.
Zimmerman was nominated by his daughter, Amy Zimmerman Hoch, who said her father’s humanitarian impact is most evident through his extensive volunteer dental work.
“He participated in 61 international mission trips, often organizing and leading them to provide free dental care in underserved communities across Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa,” Zimmerman Hoch said.
Zimmerman has provided free dental care on trips to Romania, Russia, Peru, India, Tanzania, Ukraine, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Honduras, among other countries, he said.
He has two more dental mission trips planned in the next five months: one to Honduras and one to Tanzania.
Most Americans take the availability of dental care for granted, but that is not the case in many parts of the world where Zimmerman has worked, he explained.
Zimmerman has also brought his humanitarian efforts home to Pennsylvania.
In 1998, he helped found a dental clinic in McConnellsburg serving low-income patients and has volunteered there since, he said.
Since his retirement in 2024, Zimmerman has provided free dental care to children enrolled in Head Start programs from centers around Adams County, with children bussed to Head Start’s Gettysburg center for treatment, Zimmerman Hoch said.
Zimmerman’s community work extends far beyond dentistry.
“His fundraising leadership has helped to raise community facilities, including youth sports fields, school stadium improvements and the Buckwood Nature Center in Waynesboro,” Zimmerman Hoch said.
Zimmerman has served on the board of Folium Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving individuals experiencing adversity in the greater Chambersburg area, for more than 40 years, Zimmerman Hoch said.
He has been a volunteer for United Way for more than 20 years, a member of the Waynesboro Board of Health for 26 years and a board member for the Waynesboro Area YMCA for eight years, where he chaired one of the organization’s capital campaigns, Zimmerman Hoch said. He has also volunteered at the Franklin County Migrant Clinic and served as a mentor in the Waynesboro Area School District, Zimmerman Hoch said.
Zimmerman is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Waynesboro and has taught high school and adult Sunday school for more than 40 years.
For his service, Zimmerman received an original plaque designed and manufactured by Gettysburg sculptor Gary Casteel and citations from both the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and the Pennsylvania Senate.
Dr. Walton Jones, chairman of the Eisenhower Society’s Board of Trustees, read a personal letter from Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of Eisenhower and expert-in-residence at the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College.
“Your commitment to providing health care to hundreds of served populations, both locally and abroad, is remarkable. The sheer scale of your work, 61 short-term mission trips to countries like Honduras, Haiti, Ukraine, and India, is a testament to your compassion and dedication,” Jones read from Susan Eisenhower’s letter.
Zimmerman also received a Paul Harris Fellowship, which recognizes individuals who contribute or have contributions made in their name, of $1,000 to the Rotary Foundation, said Dr. Anna-Mae Kobbe, a member of the Rotary Club of Gettysburg and chairwoman of the club’s Philanthropy Committee. The club also presented a $1,000 donation in Zimmerman’s name to the Rotary Foundation, Kobbe said.
This is Zimmerman’s second Paul Harris Fellowship, and Zimmerman Hoch pinned the recognition on her father during the ceremony.
Additionally, the club donated $250 in Zimmerman’s name to Safina Street Network, a Christian organization in Tanzania that works with vulnerable children and young people living on the streets there. Zimmerman has taken 14 mission trips with Safina, he said.
State Rep. Dan Moul (R-Adams) and State Rep. Chad Reichard (R-Franklin) attended the luncheon and commended Zimmerman for his service. Because the state Senate was in session, State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-33) could not attend, and his district director, Melissa Cruys, represented him.
Zimmerman was joined at the luncheon by many of his family members, friends and former colleagues.
Dr. Brad Hoch, a pediatrician, Zimmerman’s son-in-law and husband of Zimmerman Hoch, gave the keynote address. Hoch was the first recipient of the Eisenhower Humanitarian Award in Gettysburg in 2003.
Hoch shared photos of Zimmerman on mission trips dating back more than 40 years and noted how grateful patients in developing countries were for his work.
“In many of these places, dental care is hard to come by or too expensive,” Hoch said.
Hoch said Zimmerman often traveled to remote villages and harsh landscapes to provide treatment, emphasizing the scope of his commitment.
“We can’t all provide that level of care to people, but each of us in this room has been given amazing gifts that could be used in some awesome ways,” Hoch said.
The impact of Zimmerman’s work stretches beyond fillings and extractions, Hoch emphasized.
“Now they know that their lives mean something to somebody. You brought them the gift of self-worth,” Hoch told Zimmerman.
Zimmerman has “more civic accomplishments than most people could pack into two lifetimes,” Hoch said.
Zimmerman also recalled some of his own experiences on mission trips.
In 2002, he led a team of dentists and assistants to Romania in the snow, he said. A teenage patient told him through a translator that she would not be touched or open her mouth and was visibly angry, he said.
Her fear came from bad experiences with dentists in an under-resourced socialized medicine system where providers were not always supplied with what they needed, he explained.
“It’s not that the dentists were bad; they just weren’t always supplied with everything that they needed,” Zimmerman said. “It can be a very scary thing to have to go to the dentist when you’re already in pain.”
The teenager ultimately allowed him to treat her but remained abrasive, he said.
Before she left, after receiving antibiotics and post-operative instructions from other team members, she walked back over to Zimmerman and smiled.
“I don’t know if she knew a little English or more than likely they taught her to say it in post-op,” Zimmerman said. “She asked, ‘May I give you a kiss?’ She leans over, kisses my left cheek and before I can even react, she’s out the door.”
Zimmerman, who is active in his Christian faith, said there is no greater joy in life than “being where God wants you and doing what He wants you to do in that moment.”
During his final year of dental school in 1977, Zimmerman failed part of his licensing exam in May and could not retake it until mid-August, he said.
“I was supposed to buy a practice,” Zimmerman said. “I couldn’t take a test again until like mid-August.”
A chaplain told him the Christian Medical Dental Association was taking a mission trip to the Dominican Republic and needed a dentist, Zimmerman said. Although he was not yet licensed in the United States, all the group required was a diploma from an American dental school, which he already had.
“I went on my first mission trip in 1977. I had a wife who loved and supported me, and she’d let me go again every year for a week or two,” he said.
Several trips later, Zimmerman began organizing his own missions with other dentists and dental professionals, he said.
He described those many trips as a blessing that has given him deep joy.
Zimmerman and his wife, Linda Zimmerman, have five adult children and 16 grandchildren, he said.
After graduating from Temple University School of Dentistry in Philadelphia, Zimmerman opened his dental practice in Waynesboro in 1977 and treated patients from both Adams and Franklin counties until his retirement in 2024, he said.
The Dwight D. Eisenhower Humanitarian Award was first presented in 1967 by the Chamber of Commerce of Palm Desert, California, with President Eisenhower and entertainer Bob Hope as its inaugural honorees, according to the Rotary International website.
The award was conceived by Dr. Alloy Heyan, a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, dentist and veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. After Eisenhower’s death in 1969, the Palm Desert Rotary Club took over the award until it ended when Heyan moved on to help form another Rotary club in California, according to the Rotary International website.
After retiring and moving to Lancaster, Heyan brought the idea to Gettysburg Rotary in 2002, and the award has been presented locally since 2003, according to the club’s website.
The Rotary Club of Gettysburg is part of an international network of Rotary volunteers made up of business and professional leaders who provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards and help build goodwill and peace around the world, according to the club’s website.