From the moment Dr. David Jacobson walks through the door of the Patient Admitting and Emergency Services (PAES) Clinic at the School of Dentistry, his to-do-list never ends.
“This isn’t a job for someone who doesn’t own a good pair of sneakers,” says Jacobson, director of the clinic. A staff dentist for 20 years, Jacobson worked in several jobs, including musician, before finding his niche at U-M.
“I taught myself (music) at the age of eight when I found a tenor recorder in a closet,” Jacobson says. “At 10 I found an old Stella guitar that my uncle abandoned and in high school I received my formal training on bass.” Although proficient in guitar, bass, mandolin, piano, drums and ukulele, Jacobson never limits himself. “I can produce pleasing music on any other instruments that happen to be lying around.”
His passion for dentistry also was stirred in his youth. “My father was a dentist and I grew up impressed by that; it seemed like everyone knew him,” Jacobson says.
“As a boy walking with him to get the Sunday New York Times it was constant shouting … ‘Hey doc! Thanks for helping my cousin with that abscess.’ People were always stopping me to tell me what a good man my father was, how he saw them at 2 a.m. when they were out of their minds with pain.
“Getting people out of pain became a career as I chose to give up general practice and work in the emergency clinic. I’m sure those early memories and the profound admiration I had for my father, Isidore H. Jacobson, were steering me here long before I knew it myself.”
Before settling on a career as a dentist, Jacobson tried several different jobs in his high school and college years. One of his most memorable experiences came as a cab driver in Manhattan. “One time I was driving my cab to Lennox Hill Hospital through red lights with one hand on the horn and two guys in the back who had just been injured in a gang fight,” Jacobson says. “It was like ‘The French Connection.’
“I also spent some time as a delivery driver for a sub shop,” he says. “I would drive around in a Volkswagen with a 6-foot submarine sandwich on the roof that also lit up at night.”
After graduating in 1972 from Van Buren High School in New York, Jacobson attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in 1976. Jacobson came to U-M that fall, earned his Master of Science degree in 1978 and a doctorate in dental surgery in 1988. He began working at U-M right out of dental school. Twenty years later, Jacobson says he enjoys the college setting.
After a two-mile bike ride to work, Jacobson’s day starts at 7:30 a.m. as he begins returning phone calls and e-mails from the previous day. When the clinic and emergency room open at 9 a.m., Jacobson starts working with the dental students who do residencies at the clinic. He spends his lunchtime catching up on charts and addressing additional problems that arise at PAES clinic. Jacobson’s day concludes at 5:30 p.m. when the last dental student leaves.
“The best days are when students stay after their shift to ask questions,” he says. “That’s when I pay back all the wonderful teachers I ever had who gladly did that for me.”
Although Jacobson remains busy with work, he has not lost sight of his music. Through his teenage years into adulthood, Jacobson found himself performing at cafés, weddings, not-for-profit fundraisers and private parties. He also builds instruments.
In 2000 Jacobson had two original tracks appear on an album called “Technicolor Motorhome,” an album of various artists produced by Steely Dan fanatics from all over the world.
Through music, Jacobson found his wife Toula. “We met after one of my performances,” Jacobson says. “(We) talked for hours until the sun came up. She gave me her phone number and I told her I’d call — I did.”
After decades of musical influence in his life, it’s still easy for Jacobson to sum up why it has been such a big part of his life: “(It’s) the same thing that compels me to breathe; I couldn’t not do it.”
The weekly Spotlight features staff members at the University. To nominate a candidate, please contact the Record staff at [email protected].
