Honored for outstanding career in dentistry By Sylvia Corneliussen ’01 When Jack Kanter ’35 was growing up, he knew one thing for sure: one day, he was going to build bridges. As a child, Kanter dreamed of becoming a civil engineer. But when he graduated from Norfolk’s Maury High School during the Great Depression, many engineers were being forced to work in jobs distant from the field. “My father suggested I think about dentistry,” he said. “So, I decided if I couldn’t build big bridges, I’d build little ones.” After one year at the Norfolk Division of William and Mary, he went on to the Medical College of Virginia. The decision turned out to be the right one. He was recently honored as the Pierre Fauchard Academy’s Outstanding Dentist in Virginia for his “contributions to the art and science of the profession of dentistry” over a 50-year career. During World War II, Kanter served as a dental officer in the U.S. Navy, supervising the conversion of a captured Italian mobile communications trailer into the first mobile dental unit in the Navy, which treated nearly 300 patients each month. Kanter returned to Norfolk after the war to reopen his private practice. In 1949, a call from a fellow dentist offered a new challenge. “He said, ‘Jack, we’ve got to do something for children with cleft lip and cleft palate.’” Kanter agreed, and the two joined forces with a plastic surgeon and a speech pathologist to create what eventually became the Eastern Virginia Craniofacial Team, a forerunner to Operation Smile. “I would take impressions to make a cover over the palate so the child could eat, drink and later speak until the surgeon could close the palate,” Kanter explained. His unique practice extended to maxillofacial prosthetics and the creation of artificial eyes, ears and other features. Since existing materials for prosthetics didn’t hold up well over time, he developed new materials for creating and coloring the prosthetics. “For the time, they were considered really good,” Kanter noted. Although he never advertised the products, word got around and the materials were used by doctors as far away as India and Australia. Kanter holds two patents for problem-solving devices he created. One is for a dental device he designed to keep cotton rolls in place in a patient’s mouth. The second is related not to the field of dentistry but to another of his interests: firefighting. The device he invented consisted of nine nozzles of varying sizes and angles that would spin, creating a water shield that offered protection from heat and fireballs. Aside from his achievements, what has been most rewarding to Kanter are the relationships he formed with his patients. He knows of at least three families for whom he treated four generations of family members. A tribute to the impact he had on his patients came last year when one, who credited Kanter for inspiring him to become a dentist, presented him with his award from the Pierre Fauchard Academy. “Many of them told me I was like family. That’s what made it special,” Kanter said.