IN MEMORIAM

IN MEMORIAM

Marvin Stark

Professor of Dentistry

San Francisco

1921—2002

A memorial service for Dr. Marvin Stark (UCSF, Dentistry ’52) was held on February 15, 2002 at Temple Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, California. Dr. Stark was born in the Polish town of Smorze on March 14, 1921. Marv’s dynamic career as an academician and professor at UCSF, his strong international community service and his private practice in Santa Clara are testaments as to what one individual can accomplish in a lifetime. Had he remained in Poland during WWII his possibilities would certainly have been severely limited.

 

Marv came to the United States as a young boy and graduated from high school at age 16. He went to work at a hotel in Michigan owned by his aunt where he met Gladys, his wife of 58 years. He served in the Army during World War II and upon his discharge in 1946, he and Gladys attended and graduated from UCLA. Marv was interested in going to medical school and was accepted into the prestigious six-year medical-dental program at Harvard. Circumstances instead led him to attend the UCSF School of Dentistry. Upon graduation in 1952 he received training in oral biology through a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard. His first child, Carolyn, was born in Boston during his program. The following year the Stark family returned to California where Marv joined the faculty at the UCSF School of Dentistry and set up a part-time practice in Santa Clara, where he practiced for 30 years.

 

Early in his dental career, Dr. Stark started volunteering to address a glaring absence of dental care for the underprivileged. In 1967, he and his family traveled to Cartagena, Columbia aboard a ship called Project Hope. While there, Dr. Stark immunized students and lectured to dental students. During this trip, his wife Gladys contracted viral encephalitis and fell into a coma that lasted for two months. During that time he prayed for his wife and made a pledge that if she recovered, he would devote his professional life to contribute to humanity in some special way.

 

After his wife's complete recovery, Dr. Stark kept his promise. He took a small trailer that he had used during a research project and outfitted it with donated dental equipment and took it to the California School for the Blind and performed dental screenings. Later, officials at the California Department of Migrant Education heard about Dr. Stark's work and suggested he use this concept to help the migrant workers who often had never seen a dentist.

 

In 1970, Dr. Stark co-founded the Mobile Dental Health Clinic with other UCSF Faculty, Drs. Ronald Nicholson and Kenneth Soelberg. They used funding from the State of California, Dr. Stark's research grants, and the donation of equipment and supplies from dental supply manufacturers to outfit three inter-city buses and took them into the central valley of California to treat the children of the migrant farm workers.

 

This program was later expanded internationally to include the underprivileged children of Israel, Greece, Yugoslavia, and the Aleuts of the Pribiloff Islands in Alaska. He sponsored volunteer dental students and faculty to help him perform dental treatment for needy people in these countries. Dr. Stark renamed this annual program Project Carolyn, in memory of his oldest daughter, Carolyn, who died of a seizure in 1980 at the early age of 26.

 

Dr. Stark had a wonderfully generous heart and loved to serve those in need. He was admired in his community and by his fellow faculty, the students and staff at UCSF. He loved his work at the School of Dentistry and was a generous financial benefactor. After his retirement from UCSF he was honored with the title, professor emeritus. He truly had a life of service to mankind. He made an important impact on those who worked with him and will be sorely missed.

 

Dr. Renaldo Parisi

Dr. Roger Pelzner