March/April 2018 | Page 30

Dr. William Trice PDA President, 1979-1980 Dentistry has been a family to me. When I went to Pitt, I came from West Virginia – I got involved, went to dental school, went to World War II and some guys asked me why I wanted to be a dentist. And I told them about how I had seen a dentist perform a surgery and I was so spell- bound, when the operation ended the dentist asked me what I thought, and I said ‘when this war is over, if I live through it, I think I’d like to go to dental school.’ This is how I really got into dentistry – my division officer was a guy from the University of Pittsburgh – he was not a dentist. But when the war was over, I came home – I grew up some 40 miles from Pittsburgh in West Virginia – and I was fortunate to get into Pitt dental school. The more I got into dentistry, the more I liked it. 30 MA R CH/A P R I L 2018 | P EN N S YLVA N IA D EN TA L J O UR N A L