Dr. Paul Klein

by Dr. Owen Nichols, Central Region Editor

Paul Klein hails from Pella, Iowa, a small south central Iowa town 45 miles southeast of Des Moines.

When Paul was growing up in the 1920s the economy was based on manufacturing and retail services for the surrounding farms. Two of the largest employers were the Vermeer Company, which manufactured farm machinery, and the Pella Roll Screen Company, which made rolling window screens.

Today Vermeer machinery is responsible for all the large rolls of hay seen in fields across the country. The Pella Window Company is a nationally recognized corporation.

In those days, the town had a population of about 4,000, 95% of whom were descendants of immigrants from Holland. In fact, fluency in Dutch was almost a requisite for employment in the local stores.

The elder Kleins worked in town. His mother and aunt were schoolteachers. His father was the town postmaster, having been appointed to this position by the local Democratic Party machine who assumed it would be a short tenure, as it was widely believed that Governor Dewey would defeat President Truman in the elections of 1948.

Following one of the greatest upset elections in American history, the local pols wanted to reclaim their patronage for someone else. Mr. Klein objected, and the townspeople’s respect and esteem served to thwart the wishes of the party regulars. He kept his job.

Paul graduated from high school in 1939. He also acquired his first car, a well-used ’31 Chevrolet that cost $35 and required his mechanical attentions to keep in running condition.

The War Years

That fall Paul entered Iowa Central College where he majored in chemistry. When World War II began, he enrolled in a program for ordinance inspectors at Illinois Institute of Technology, then worked as an ordinance inspector at a washing machine factory in Iowa that had been converted to manufacture machine guns.

Paul volunteered the summer of 1943 and entered the army, which sent him to the University of Minnesota to become a radar repairman. It was assumed that radar personal would suffer heavy casualties, but luckily, the axis powers never recognized the importance of this new science to the war effort.

Because of a surplus of radar-trained soldiers, Paul was assigned to the Army Signal Corps to work in their new F. M. multiplex technology and sent to southern China to serve with the Army Air Corps. The allies had no infrastructure in China and F. M. radio was to form the communications link for staging areas advancing north to ultimately attack Japan.

After the Japanese Empire capitulated on September 2, 1945, it took Paul another seven months to get a flight to India to begin the return trip home. He embarked aboard a troop ship in Calcutta for an ocean voyage across nearly half the globe to San Francisco. Paul finally mustered out in Saint Louis in 1946 and was home for Easter Sunday.

On to Dentistry

Paul had always wanted to be a dentist. Thanks to the G. I. Bill, which opened educational doors and career opportunities for more than a million returning servicemen, this wish became a reality.

However, he first had to complete a course in college biology before his application to Northwestern’s dental school could be completed. Undaunted, he got permission to take the spring semester final in biology at Iowa Central College. Tutoring eight hours a day for four weeks, he passed the course and completed the application to dental school.

When Paul started in June 1946, Northwestern was still on the accelerated wartime three-year program of 12 continuous quarters. Most of the class ‘49 was veterans.

Paul was interested in orthodontics, but general practice experience was a prerequisite for graduate studies. He received the Mosby Book Award—a subscription to the American Journal of Orthodontics, as well as election into the Omicron Delta Upsilon honor society.

Lou Jean Bonkrude entered Paul’s life in 1947. The future Mrs. Klein grew up in the small northern Wisconsin town of Dallas, population 400. The 160-acre Bonkrude farm, handed down from the original Norwegian pioneers over a hundred years ago, is still in the family. One of three girls, Lou Jean joined the war effort and went to work for the War Bond Division of the Treasury Department in Chicago.

Paul spent the summer after graduation as an instructor in Pediatric Dentistry before the couple moved to Fairbault, Minnesota to start a practice. Their first child, Paul, was born in Minnesota.

After three years in general practice, Jean and Paul returned to Chicago where he enrolled in Northwestern’s orthodontic program. John Thompson was department head and Bill Downs and Harry Sicher were lecturers. Hal Perry was in Paul’s class as was Marion Dick, who developed a more manageable cephalometer than the university’s room-filling behemoth.

Orthodontic residents at Northwestern had a unique exposure to patients afflicted with maladies of the temporomandibular joint. John Thompson had an interest in this field and patients from five states filtered into his department. One of his students, Hal Perry, continues to enjoy an international reputation in this field.

Paul’s master’s thesis research was an investigation into the correlation, or lack of it, between the slope of the articular eminence and incisal guidance.

Relocating to Oregon

In January ’54 the Kleins moved to Portland where Harold Noyes had offered Paul a position in the Orthodontic department at the University of Oregon, which had previously been the proprietary Northwest Pacific Dental College.

The Kleins then moved into their current home in Lake Oswego where their second and third children were born.

In some respects, Paul’s generation of orthodontists were pioneers. At the time there were only 15 or 20 orthodontists in the state. Close relationships developed with Mat Matthews, Cy O’Brien, John and Rollie Anderson, and Frank Piacentini, who arrived a few years later. In addition to their private practices, most of them were also active in the orthodontic department at the dental school.

By the late ’50s Harold Noyes had decided to recruit Ernest Hixon to head the soon to be created graduate program. Paul arranged a meeting during a vacation in Iowa and convinced Hixon to come to Oregon.

During his 25-year career as a part-time orthodontic educator, Paul had the privilege of working with department chiefs Mat Matthews, Don Carlson, Ernie Hixon, and Doug Buck.

Paul had a practice downtown in the Medical-Dental Building on SW 11th and Taylor. In 1961 the practice moved to Lake Oswego and Paul became the only orthodontist between Portland and Salem.

"This was a wonderful time to be an orthodontist," he enthuses. Patient loads were lighter. "We did the best we could without surgery." Paul believed in the direct application of forces while avoiding unfavorable vectors.

Treatment was always tailored to individual requirements. Generally he felt the simplest approach was best. "I loved what I was doing and was able to get out of the office by five most nights," he reminisces.

Giving Back

Always active in his community, Paul has been president of the Clakamas County Dental Society, the Lake Oswego Rotary Club, the Northern Section of the Angle Society, and his local church.

An advocate of "sharing ideas, one mind to another," he was always willing to share what he knew with colleagues and students. This led to the creation of an invention used by nearly every orthodontist in practice today.

In the middle ‘60s, Paul presented to his study club the idea of replacing wire ligature ties with synthetic elastic ligatures. Colleague Rollie Anderson immediately saw the relevance of the concept and expanded on its potential applications.

Later, Paul and Rollie in collaboration with local technology companies, brought the AlastiK concept of force applications to fruition. Although their endeavor was eventually marketed through Unitek, initially, the two men had formed a joint company, ModCom, to manufacture the products locally in order to maintain quality control.

ModCom became a sizable injection-molding company. It outgrew its original plant in Beaverton and moved to Canby. In 1998, when the company was bought out by Unitek’s parent organization, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, about half its business was for Unitek and half was in custom molding for non-related products, such as housings for Hewlett-Packard computers.

A tinkerer since his youth when he built his own radios and resurrected his ’31 Chevy, today Paul holds more than 20 patents. These range from AlastiK-related items to safety release headgears.

Two of the Klein’s three children still live in Lake Oswego. Nancy is married to Dr. John Tongue, an orthopedic surgeon, and lives four houses away on the lake. She enjoys a successful artistic career as an oil painter.

Doug, the youngest, joined the practice in 1982 after completing orthodontic training at the University of Washington where he was exposed to the ideas of Drs. Al Moore and Dick Reidel—internationally recognized giants in orthodontics. Father and son enjoyed ten years of practice together.

Paul, the oldest, is the only child living out of state. He is a professional musician and teacher in Bellingham, Washington.

In addition to their nine grandchildren, the Kleins enjoy travels to Hawaii and British Columbia. The cold, rainy winter months will usually find them at their home in Palm Desert golfing and biking.

Paul has become something of an amateur sculptor. His daughter thinks he has the talent to expand his horizons into bronze castings. Both are still active in their church and a lot of Jean’s time is taken up with local charities.

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