18 July 2023

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Retired dentist turns 100: Tri-City Herald

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Longtime Tri-Cities dentist Lester Schilke celebrated his 100th birthday on July 11. He credits a mosquito bite in part for his good fortune in living such a long life — that and hard work.

He was a student in the first class of the University of Washington School of Dentistry and by 1955, after practicing dentistry in Forks and Aberdeen, had opened a practice in Richland.

But most of his dental career was spent in Pasco, working five and a half days a week until he retired in about 1987 and sold his practice. He opened on Saturdays for people who could not get off work during the week.

Schilke remembers extracting teeth for $2 or $3 in the 1950s. But that was more than some people could afford. He was sometimes paid with eggs, honey or a pail of milk or not paid at all, he said. He was on call around the clock. If people were suffering, he would help, he said. He grew up in Newport, Washington, in a family that had little money.

He worked in logging camps when he was a young man, But his older sister earned her college degree and became a teacher.

She urged Schilke to follow her example and go to college, he said. He took classes at the University of Idaho, Georgia Tech and Western Washington University. “When you don’t have any money, you go wherever you can,” Schilke said.

UW recruited three students who needed financial help in its first dentistry school class, and Schilke said by a stroke of luck he was one of them.

He picked dentistry because he saw dentists driving nice cars and having spending money. But he also liked taking care of patients.

“I was lucky to be a dentist and lucky in the service,” Schilke said.

Read more at: https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/article276983998.html#storylink=cpy