|
MENU
|
|
|
|
| Biography |
I grew up in the "little Italy" section of Pittsburgh. I am the product of CHRISTIAN BROTHER education...graduating from Central Catholic High School sometime in the last century. I owe much of what I have accomplished in life to the good brothers and I take this opportunity here to thank them.
If any of the good sisters of Divine Providence from Larimer Avenue are still living, I thank you as well...especially sister Barbara-Ann, who taught me that there is indeed life after the seventh grade...and if I would apply myself...the sky could be the limit. You were right of course, sister...and I thank you for your direction and encouragement...wherever you are! |
| |
I received a B.S. in Biology from the University of Pittsburgh where I found that creative writing courses could be a wonderful diversion from organic chemistry and micro-biology. Little did I know then, that they would provide a foundation for what has become one of the great passions in my life! |
| |
Having my first novel published has been no small thrill in my life. It would be a lie to say otherwise--and we all know what the good sisters would do if they caught you with a lie on your lips(Barbara-Ann excluded, of course). In fact, the prospect of being a published author ranks up there with the joy that I found on my wedding day, my acceptance into dental school and the birth of my four children--its a distant second to those events--but its in the same neighborhood. |
| |
I received my doctorate in dental medicine from Pitt in 1974. Besides the two years that I spent in training at the U.S. Public Health Hospital in Detroit and the two years that I served rural America in the National Health Service Corps, I have spent my entire life here in Pittsburgh. I love this city. It has a "big city" feel with a small town's warmth. There are big-league(and major college)sporting events, a nice cultural diversity, wonderful restaurants and a view of the downtown area from Mount Washington that still takes my breath away! Besides Poisitano, Italy, I don't think that I would want to live anywhere else. |
| |
I am a hybrid in my profession--an academician as well as a clinician. Although I have always maintained a private practice in the Pittsburgh suburb of Oakmont, I also served on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh as an assistant professor of prosthodontics--teaching the pre-doctoral students as well as the post-doctoral residents. I was the course director in occlusion for the first year dental students and have lectured internationally, nationally and locally on occlusal disease treatment. |
| |
Last December,after more than twenty dedicated years, I resigned from my clinical teaching and course directorship responsibilities to concentrate more on my private practice and my writing. I still maintain visiting faculty status at the University as well as continuing to lecture to the maxillofacial prosthodontic residents in the treatment of myogenous TMD. |
| |
Speaking at dental conferences and lecturing is a passion of mine and a needed diversion from "spit-on-the-hands" dentistry, but it is with writing that I have found that missing part of the puzzle that has helped to define me. Sister Barbara-Ann was right all along. Application of the gifts that God has given to you not only defines you as a person...it completes you...in ways that the unfullfilled mind can never fully comprehend. |
|
|
; |
