March/April 2018 | Page 7

I m p ressio n s ses·qui·cen·ten·ni·al by Dr. Stephen T. Radack III, Editor seskwәsen 'tenēәl/ adjective relating to the 150 th anniversary of a significant event. noun a 150 th anniversary. Happy Sesquicentennial and welcome to this special keepsake edition of your Pennsylvania Dental Journal celebrating the milestone 150 th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Dental Association. I wonder if those first members back in 1868 ever imagined that an organization of likeminded dentists they started would still be in existence in the 21 st century. I am sure it would be even harder to imagine the incredible changes that have occurred not only in our profession, but the state, the country and the world. I know how much dentistry has changed since I started dental school back in 1982 and can’t imagine going back in time, let alone even thinking about how different treating patients was when PDA was started. Just consider even the basic essentials of what we take for granted today as we treat almost every patient: local anesthetic, the high-speed handpiece, an electric hydraulic dental chair, light cured composite and how impression materials have evolved from rubber base to vinyl polysiloxane (VPS) to no impression at all with digital scanning. Think also about the changing face of dentistry over these 150 years. I would imagine those founding fathers were all white males, but today a scan across the profession shows half of the dentists now are women. As a senior colleague of mine reminded me recently in an email, there has been a striking change in what were mostly European names of our members’ last names to a large diverse population of dentists that are of Arab, Middle Eastern, African, Asian and Indian descent. That same change has also occurred in the tripartite of the ADA/PDA and the component dental associations. In my local Erie County Dental Association alone we have always encouraged younger members to seek leadership positions, and the current board is made up entirely of members younger than 40 years of age; and the majority are women. As many of you know, two of the last three past presidents of the ADA are women, and since the turn of this century we have had an African American and Asian as president. I do not take up too much space in this special issue with my words. There are guest editorials from our emeritus editors, as well as so much history of our PDA to read about, a trip down memory lane indeed. Pay special attention to the all of the awesome photos the staff has compiled from the archives and look at this cover. It is an amalgamation of so many of our past covers. It is truly my privilege to be the editor of this publication as we celebrate this milestone and I am honored to follow in a long line of excellent editors that preceded me, especially those during my years as a member: Dr. Marvin Sniderman, Dr. Judy McFadden, Dr. Rich Galeone and current PDA president Dr. Bruce Terry. I consider myself lucky that during my tenure as your editor, this milestone journal is being published. Thanks to all our dedicated members who continue to be a part of this association and to the leaders that have blazed trails in organized dentistry since our founding 150 years ago. Also a big THANK YOU to my associate editor, Dr. Gulia Omene, and to our awesome PDA staff, especially Rob Pugliese for his dedication to this publication for the last 20 years. And finally don’t forget to mark your calendars for Pennsylvania’s Dental Meeting, PDA 150, on April 27-28 in Hershey to celebrate our sesquicentennial. Hope to see you there! Enjoy this treasure! — STR3 MARCH/AP RIL 2018 | P EN N SYLVAN IA DEN TAL JOURNAL 7