Spring 2001PCSO Oral History Project

This interview with Dr. Richard C. Philbrick, who passed away on May 18, 2000, is part of the PCSO Oral History Project’s continued effort to preserve the history of the PCSO by interviewing senior members of our orthodontic community.

Norman Wahl interview Dr. Philbrick, PCSO President from 1968 - 1969 on April 30, 1996.

Q: You graduated in 1943 from Curriculum II at the University of California in San Francisco. Who were your teachers?

A: George Hahn, Glen and Ken Terwilliger, Ernie Johnson, Ernest Setzer—that’s about it.

Q: Who was the department head at that time?

A: George Hahn. He scared the heck out of you, but was a wonderful gentleman with a heart of gold. Glen Terwilliger, too, scared us students, making us hold the line just as they had to do with Father Angle.

Q: Who was it that you kind of looked up to as a model?

A: Oh, I think George Hahn and the Terwilligers, all three of them.

Q: What appliance did they teach at that time?

A: We started out with the ribbon arch and finally went to edgewise.

Q: Would you say that was a transition year for the appliances?

A: It was a transition time for some of those men—from ribbon to edgewise, yep.

Q: Then, when you got out, did you go into the service, or start in practice?

A: I got out in ’43 and immediately went into general dentistry in the U.S. Army. When we got into the service, we went in as first lieutenants, so that was a rather rapid takeoff.

Q: Where were you stationed?

A: When we got out of school, I went down to The Presidio at Monterey; but then I went back to Camp Barkley in Abilene, Texas.

Q: Did you do general dentistry there?

A: I did everything: general dentisty, prosthetics, surgery. I'm very poorly qualified as a surgeon and I’m glad I never wound up doing any surgery after my experience in Abilene.

Q: Were there any orthodontists with you in your unit?

A: Well, George Merchant, a dental classmate, was there, but as far as orthodontists, I don’t think there were any. We had just gotten out of school as orthodontic graduates of Curriculum II, but we went into the Army strictly as general dentists.

Q: So when you got out of the service, how did you start your practice?

A: When I came back to Seattle, there weren’t many orthodontists here, so I opted to open an office of my own. Emery Fraser, Paul Lewis, and Pete Bishop were very helpful to me in getting started. Arnie Stoller and Don McEwan were also very helpful.

Q: Were they part of the Northwest Tweed group?

A: Fraser, Lewis and Bishop were, but McEwan and Stoller used the universal appliance. They really convinced me to go to light wires, like it is today, way before any of the Northwest Tweed or Angle people did it.

Q: Were you using gold in those days?

A: Yes, we were. We used gold bands and the whole works was gold. Then, after I got out, I started using stainless steel, thanks to the universal men.

Another new technology was alginate, which brings up sailing. I’ve always been a sailor—I love sailboats. Dr. Jim Nuckels introduced me to Dr. J. C. Campbell who was a well-known advertising dentist in California. He let me sail his boat for him. He would pay the bills and pay the moorage and I could take the boat out anytime I wanted. It was just great. When I got acquainted with him, he found out that we were still taking impressions in plaster of paris. He said, "Well, we’ve got a lot better material than that." So he furnished the orthodontic division with alginate all the time I was in school—free.

Q: Was Campbell headquartered in San Francisco?

A: Yes, he had offices all over California, but his main office was down on Market Street.

Q: What year did you start practicing orthodontics—’45?

A: ’46.

Q: When did you start using preformed bands?

A: Oh gosh, I didn’t use a lot of preformed bands. I retired in 1983 and I was using some preformed, but I was having my bands made for me by my lab technician, so I was doing almost all indirect bands.

Q: How did you become active in the society?

A: Well, it just seemed like a good thing to be active in the AAO and in the PCSO. I felt an obligation to do my share.

In our association, it was imperative that we exchange ideas freely, not for money, but because it was for the betterment of our patients and ourselves. I also think it was extremely important, through our study clubs, to learn how to do orthodontics as opposed to learning how to make more money.

Q: Who were some of the other members of your study club?

A: George McCulloch, Denny Rees, Rudy Gothenquist, Fred Crutcher.

Q: Pardon me, but wasn’t Dr. Rees in Portland?

A: Yes.

Q: And he came all the way up to Seattle?

A: Yes, or we would go down there. In fact, Sherm Maxon was much farther than Portland. He was from Walla Walla, McCulloch was from Yakima, and I was in Seattle.

I’ve been a believer that the important thing was that the PCSO was to help everybody become better orthodontists, rather than just the men (there were no women) in the universal appliance group or the edgewise group.

Q: How was that accomplished?

A: Well, I never did accomplish that but it was my personal goal. The PCSO was divided into two camps: There was the Angle Society and there was the universal group. They just had different ideas, but the goal was the same.

I felt that everybody should be open to what’s being taught. I didn’t think the Angle Society should have meetings that excluded the universal people because there was something to be learned by all of us. It was important for everybody to be in the PCSO.

Q: Was the rivalry ever resolved, between the universal and the edgewise?

A: I think so, but it lasted for quite a while.

Q: You were PCSO President in 1968. What issues did you deal with?

A: We tried develop good relations with the general dentists, even though some were doing orthodontics. While we have a specialty, there’s nothing that says a general dentist can’t do orthodontics, trained or not. That’s a stickler—a hard one to resolve.

Q: You say you retired in 1983. Did you sell your practice?

A: No, I closed it. I didn’t think it was right to build a practice and turn around and sell it. I still don’t think that’s an ethical thing to do. Now it is a fairly common way of making money.

Q: Well, I can see the difficulty there. Are you still active in sailing?

A: Yeah, you bet. I do a lot of traveling and a lot of sailing. Been down playing with the boat today.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to add?

A: One thing that’s always stuck in my craw is the attitude of the orthodontist who says, "If somebody comes into my office asking about orthodontics, they must need orthodontics, so I’m going to treat them." I just don’t believe in that attitude.

I think somebody comes in for advice and there’s a lot of cases that would be a lot better off if they never had treatment. Some of the things that I see today, I don’t think I would have messed around with. We don’t need as much orthodontics as is being done today.

I occasionally go into an office and I see the gals doing work that I would never permit. When I was practicing, if I put torque in a wire, I would make sure I was doing it right. The gals who have had a few days of training, who are bending some archwires and shoving the torque into them—I don’t think that’s right. Not that they can’t be taught—because they sure as heck can.

But I object to the mass production of orthodontics today. I’m very happy that I’m not doing orthodontics today.

Q: Well, it sounds like you got out at a good time.

A: I think I did. We were in it at a good time and a learning time, and I think we’ve gotten out of it at a good time. It was nice to be able to deal with the patients and their parents. The parents paid the bill as opposed to having the insurance pay. Those were the good old days.

We are sorry to report that Dr. Philbrick passed away on May 19, 2000.

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