>> I come from a family of physicians.
My father was a surgeon.
My brother and sisters were all surgeons.
My uncle was a surgeon.
And when I went to Villanova, I thought perhaps I would follow in my dad's footsteps
until one day he came along and put his arm around me and he said, "Tom,
you should think about dentistry."
He said, "You're very good with your hands."
And that was a genetic thing because my grandfather did miniature sculpting.
And so, I said on a whim.
I said, "Okay.
I'm -- I'll take the dental boards.
So, I was a junior in Villanova and I took the boards.
And at that time, they gave you architectural drawing, a piece of chalk, and a scalpel,
and you had to -- and a millimeter ruler,
and you had to carve whatever it was on that architectural drawing.
And I aced it.
I ended up with the highest score.
So, I started getting all these calls from the deans
of different dental schools to come in for an interview.
And then, so we went around, you know, with great amazement
because I had no idea what was involved with dentistry.
I mean, you know, when I was a child, it was a filling and that was all I knew about dentistry.
So, the tour through the dental school opened my eyes to this whole new world
of excitement in science and reconstruction.
And as they say, the rest was history.
I chose Temple because I just loved the clinical environment that they had at the time,
and it's certainly a lot different today than it was 40 years ago, but the heart and the spirit
of Temple just came through so strongly that you couldn't resist it.
You just had to become part of it.
So, I went through dental school at Temple.
This was during the end of Vietnam War and so I signed up in the army program at Temple.
And when I completed my studies at the dental school, I went --
I ended up at Fort Dix for two years, during which time the general was kind enough
to allow me to come back and teach at Temple one day a week.
And so, I did that.
Then, I returned to Temple for my residency program in prosthodontics,
and I continued to teach at Temple for another decade
after that while we were developing our center in Fort Washington.