Dad

Article Outline

• Pride Through History and Belonging
• Sense of Justice
• Understanding Poverty and the Way Out
• Understanding the Value of Education
• Work With Your Hands
• Joy Then Joylessness
• Copyright

Please forgive me this small hubris of personal reflection, but my father passed away on the 4th of July, and honestly I can think of little else at this time. I will try to convey to you, dear JOMS reader, a bit of why in essence we have our professions, our Journal, our specialty, and indeed our civilization. It is about that peculiar human institution: family.

I imagine that each of you has, whether you recognize it or not, those who loved you as much as my Dad loved us. These family members taught you how to act, what to expect from life and thus shaped you, making you the person who treats patients, operates and dresses their wounds, and cares for the sick.

Dad had enormous sway over how we grew, what we thought, and what we decided to become as men and women. The principles that bound his life and directed his thought were an unfailing guide to all that he did, and all that he conveyed. We heard these principles and debated (and shouted) about them at the dinner table every night. We learned that each of them were both the boundaries of our actions and the path toward happiness. Each principle had such a powerful influence on my life as a surgeon that I imagine many of you, who are so successful in oral and maxillofacial surgery, were influenced in the same way.

See if my Dad's principles compare in some way to those that your family taught you.

Back to Article Outline

Pride Through History and Belonging 

Dad had an overpowering pride in our history as Spanish and Portuguese Jews for whom our personal Eden was the Iberian Peninsula. As told to him by his and my Mom's parents, he could describe the regions we were descended from, including the vineyards of the town of León, for which I and many generations of our family are named. He could describe dozens of lives of our very large family of craftsman, tradesman, farmers, scholars, and athletes. As many of today's Spaniards are descended from Conversos (Jews converted to Catholicism), when he visited Spain he would seek out these roots in the towns he visited. Into his last years we would go together with rake and shovel to tend the graves of our family, parents, brothers, my Mom, and in-laws. I always understood that my actions in life rested on the shoulders of generations. It was my inheritance that I should live my life as a good man.

More than technology and skills as a surgeon, that understanding guides my practice every day.

Back to Article Outline

Sense of Justice 

Dad could not countenance discrimination or injustice and combined with his hot temper that made for a volatile combination. Though we were from the Bronx, he hated the Yankees since our ice cream wagon was forced away (and Dad's only means of supporting the family) from the stadium on game days when Dad refused to pay “protection” money. At one point, it brought mounted NYPD to knock down the wagons and arrest my dad and others. One of my first memories was the joy in our family when the New York Giants with Willie Mays succeeded the Yankees as World Series champions, and just as gloriously Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers humiliated the Yankees yet again in 1955.

A sense of fairness and justice guide my practice today as I decide what best treatment to offer my patient, what science in our Journal should be promulgated, and what is best to teach our residents and students.

Back to Article Outline

Understanding Poverty and the Way Out 

As a family catechism, America's way was the way out of poverty. America offered the freedom to work, to hold property, and to get a hand up not a hand out. After the unfairness, discrimination, and violence of Europe, the US was the Promised Land. He understood that to be American you had to act American. As a boy he spoke only Ladino Spanish but as a man he opposed bilingual education. He learned English in the schoolyard and the classroom and took elocution lessons as an adult to rid him of his accent. He spoke English like a newscaster.

In the early years, my family used the public hospitals in New York. An entire generation was born on the same kitchen table. Because of the poverty he endured, as a surgeon I try to understand the value of my patient's money, give them access to whatever care I can, and to charge them fairly for my services. However, I have not kept to my Dad's admonition to never drive a nicer car than a Buick.

Back to Article Outline

Understanding the Value of Education 

Though he finished his formal education at 16, my Dad loved to read and learn and thought of education as a virtue in itself. It was also the surest means to self-sufficiency in tough times. When I decided on dental school, his reply was, “no matter what happens, you will be needed.”

The idea of being needed because of what I know and what I can do is one of the most appealing aspects of being an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. Bridging two professions, we are singularly qualified to offer a knowledge and skill set unique in surgery. What a gift it is for oral and maxillofacial surgeons to be sought out because of our very special qualities as educated people.

Back to Article Outline

Work With Your Hands 

Dad always asked me about my surgery practice and the patients I helped. He wanted to know the details of the procedures of surgery. He would say, “A man who works with his hands is twice blessed.” Being human is about making things and changing our environment. Dad made custom furniture, beautiful furniture, for a living. It would begin with a drawing and sometimes even a miniature so that he could understand what the customer had in mind, then to his workshop for the final creation. He was an absolute perfectionist, tearing a piece down to the base if it was not right, which was the best preparation I had for restorative dentistry and prosthodontics in dental school. I often think of those remade but now awesome pieces when I re-fix a less than perfect fracture or osteotomy.

Back to Article Outline

Joy Then Joylessness 

Mom and Dad would sing amazing duets in the stairwell and the living room. Their renditions of Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, Leonard Bernstein, Gilbert and Sullivan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Gershwin were truly at a professional level and echoed into the neighborhood. There was always enough money for music education and musical instruments. The house had a piano, organ, trumpet, guitars, banjo, drums, and mandolin.

I never heard him sing again after Mom died. While learning from his strengths I can learn from Dad's errors as well. There is no value in joylessness or anger, only in being grateful for what our family, friends, and our professional lives have to offer.

They are simple lessons really, and I bet you learned them from your families as well.

Remember where you came from, seek justice, do good, learn every day, build something for the future, demand your best every time, keep learning, and experience the joy of living.