Lasting Impressions | Fall 2016

20 © NSU LASTING IMPRESSIONS Dentistry. Her research with Lloyd was published in the Journal of Endodontics and led to the develop- ment of a rotary instrument with a di erent heat- and tension- treated alloy. She uses these same instruments for root-canal treatment. She also credits other CDM pro- fessors who played a signi cant role in her educational years, including Sergio Kuttler, D.D.S., former associate dean of advanced education. “I chose NSU’s College of Dental Medicine because of him and former CDM dean Robert A. Uchin, D.D.S.,” she said. e biggest supporter of her American education was her husband, who sold his Oklahoma home despite his deep ties to the Tulsa community. e couple then relocated to South Florida to be near NSU’s Fort Lauder- dale/Davie Campus. Ben Johnson’s accomplishments are equally as impressive as his wife’s. His list of achievements include owning a well-established endodontics practice, serving as founder of Tulsa Dental Products and creator of the erma l Endodontics Obturator and ProFile hand/rotary instruments, being named Oklahoma Inventor of the Year, and receiving the University of Tulsa Distinguished Alumni Award. In addition to presenting lectures worldwide, he served as a contrib- uting author to the 1993 revised edition of Clark’s Clinical Dentistry and the sixth edition of Ingle’s Endodontics . He also is a recipient of the American Association of Endodontists Philanthropist of the Year and President’s awards. No stranger to academics himself, Ben Johnson is a clinical professor of endodontics at the Texas A&M University College of Dentistry and at the Louisiana State University School of Dentistry. In addition, he taught dental graduate students in the CDM’s clinics. Ben Johnson said he came up with the idea for his dental instrument designs largely out of frustration. “I was a very busy clinician. I kept thinking it would be easier if the procedures were done a di erent way, but the tools weren’t available, so I came up with the concept, hand- making them myself,” he explained. “I hoped I could get a company to make them, but everyone turned me down. So I found investors and started my own company.” He eventually sold Tulsa Dental Products in 1996 to one of the companies that originally turned down his idea. is a orded him the nancial opportunity to greatly broaden his philanthropic outreach and fund scholarships, professorship chairs, research education, and equipment at universities across the country. THE MISSION OF GIVING BACK Eugenia Johnson said her husband’s philanthropic views are an inspiration. “He was my role model for philanthropy. It’s a point of view,” she said. “I have a Soviet childhood, and philanthropy wasn’t a part of my life. My family was middle class, and we did not have an opportunity to earn money,” she added. “We had a monthly salary. It was slightly more if you were an engineer or a doctor, but it’s a xed paycheck. We didn’t have the opportu- nity to share extra money; we just had the money to survive. I learned how you are supposed to share and how you are supposed to care from my husband, and from living in the United States.” Johnson also is appreciative of the education she received in Russia and at the CDM. “A er I started working in Tulsa, I started sending money to my mom,” she said. “My parents worked hard to give me this education. I told her, ‘Mom, you gave me this education, you gave me my happiness.’ is is the same thing I feel for my school— NSU—my endodontics program at the College of Dental Medicine. I can’t even express how proud and fortunate I am. I learned a lot at the CDM. I have to help my school.” For his part, Ben Johnson, who received his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree and endodontics certi cate from Baylor College of Dentistry (now Texas A&M University College of Dentistry), said it’s easy to give back to a profession that has given him so much, especially when he grew up with so little in Alabama. “I didn’t have indoor plumbing until I was 10 years old,” he said. “I worked three nights a week to help put myself through college. It was tough getting an education.” Her husband’s philanthropy led Eugenia Johnson to support the Kenneth N. Namerow Endowed Professorship in Endodontics at NSU, named in honor of Kenneth Namerow, D.D.S., who joined the CDM in 2000. “Dr. Namerow was like a father to me and helped me immensely,” she said. Namerow was in private practice in endodontics for 32 years in Ridgewood, New Jersey, before coming to the CDM to instruct predoctoral students and