"Go for It!"

by Dr. Murray Rosenthal

Professor Gordon Cheney had this wonderful sense of humor. I would say to him, "Forget about the advantages and disadvantages of a material. Let's talk about its indications and properties." And he loved that. He'd say, "There you go again, Murray. All right, well, let's talk."

As a result of Cheney, when I was in Vietnam in 1967, I would build up full crowns with acrylic restorative materials and pins for young soldiers. We couldn't do cast crowns, and nobody else would know what to do with these young men. And I said, "Let me see what I can do." So, creatively, I would build up teeth out of these materials. And they held up beautifully. In those days there was no bonding. We had pins. I had learned to play with this stuff in dental school.

I got a bronze star in Vietnam because I did a lot of civilian work, and they knew what I was doing for these young men. The guys with bad teeth were afraid to smile because all of a sudden there were these other guys with great looking teeth. People would laugh at them because their teeth were so bad. They'd come in so distraught and say, "Please, help me." I'd say, "Sit down. I'll give you an hour," or "Come in on Saturday afternoon and let's work on this thing, and we'll fix you all up. But you've got to brush." So I got these guys to take care of their mouths and fixed up their teeth. And as their teeth got better, you could see them smiling and laughing as part of the group.

I learned this attitude from Gordon Cheney: "Go for it! Go for it!" He set me on the footing to test things out. Don't say, "No, you can't do it." He's one of these people who said, "Do it! What the hell."

And I did it.