THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503150043
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: My Job
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
IN HIGH SCHOOL, Ron Henry was always checking out the girls. Especially their teeth.
He'd peer into their mouths, noting shades of whiteness, shapes of teeth and how they were wedged into the gums.
``Ever since about high school, I've been interested in teeth,'' he said, laughing.
Today, Ron Henry does more than notice teeth. He makes them. The 33-year-old is a dental laboratory technician.
In a profession that's partly technical, partly artistic, he sculpts porcelain teeth and supplies area dentists and their patients with crowns, bridges, partials and dentures.
Working behind a glass pane that keeps porcelain dust out of his eyes and nose, Henry uses a high-speed burr to contour the surface of a front tooth.
``No room for error here,'' he says, gesturing at the porcelain. It's just a millimeter and a half thick. A wrong move and Henry will gouge the metal coping underneath, the cap that fits over a patient's own tooth.
This Southerner - born in Alabama and raised in Tennessee - first wanted to be a dentist.
As a high school senior, Henry won a scholarship to the University of Tennessee. He majored in pre-dentistry only to drop out of the program. At the same time he worked as a courier for a dental lab.
``I liked the way they worked with their hands and all the artistic stuff that went into it,'' he recalled. The work was lucrative, too. Today, a lab trainee earns $12,000 and can take home as much as $60,000 a year depending on skill.
So he enrolled at the University of Kentucky and got an associate degree in applied science in dental laboratory technology.
When Henry graduated, he and a college buddy took a gamble on Virginia Beach. They opened their own lab, Henry-Schweitzer Crown & Bridge, on Holland Road.
Even after a decade, he's still driven a little nuts by patients who won't take advantage of what he's spent years studying on and off the job.
``These 50- or 60-year-olds who want to look young again - they want those little white, pearly teeth and it doesn't look natural,'' he said.
He prides himself on being able to fire in a bit of stain here, a yellowish tinge there to make the porcelain of manmade teeth age and look realistic.
He's even got a favorite tooth. ``Ahh,'' he says, enjoying the thought, ``the canine.'' The pointy cuspid is the most versatile of the 32 teeth most people have.
``They're the prettiest teeth in the mouth, because you can change a person's smile or even their whole look with their canines. You can make them look aggressive by changing the way the tooth sits, or making it longer, pointier,'' Henry said.
He is amused by women who save magazine cutouts of teeth they admire.
``They'll bring in postage-stamp sized pictures of teeth. There for a while it was Cindy Crawford. Everybody wanted to look like Cindy,'' he said, shaking a head of curly, prematurely gray hair.
Men are easier, he says. ``You know what men say - I don't care. Just do me a tooth.''
Henry doesn't buy it. ``What you do to their teeth affects their personality. You have to ask, Does the look, does the tooth fit the person? And I care. I don't want anybody to know they've got a crown.''
That's why at cocktail parties, in grocery stores, and on the golf course, he's still doing research.
``I'm always looking to see if there's a tooth shape or tooth position that I haven't tried.'' ILLUSTRATION: MORT FRYMAN
Staff
Ron Henry sculpts porcelain teeth and supplies area dentists and
their patients with crowns, bridges, partials and dentures. He even
has a favorite tooth: ``Ahh,'' he says, ``the cuspid.''
by CNB