Charles Meyer Goldstein, a dentist and USC faculty member who advocated community service and organized free dental clinics that treat thousands of poor people each year, died Sunday at his home in Brentwood from complications of multiple organ failure. He was 87.
As faculty director of the USC Mobile Clinic and later director of community outreach programs, Goldstein rallied USC dental students and with them served needy patients throughout California, including the homeless on skid row and migrant workers in the San Joaquin Valley.
In 1970, the year Goldstein was appointed director, the new mobile clinic was a bare-bones operation. Students traveled in donated Checker cabs and worked in a trailer. Patients -- migrant workers in the Central Valley -- sat in cardboard dental chairs.
Students benefited from hands-on learning, patients benefited from the care, and Goldstein established a tradition. Community outreach programs have become a signature of the USC School of Dentistry.
"I've got photographs of him pushing a broom, hauling equipment; he really set an example," said Dr. Alvin Rosenblum, a longtime friend and colleague. "There are other people . . . who have helped develop operations to help the underserved who were students of his."
Goldstein also provided dentists with the tools that made mobile dentistry and service to the poor possible. He designed mobile dental equipment, the vehicles needed to house the equipment and dental chairs that could be transported, Rosenblum said.
In addition to his work with USC, Goldstein was a key figure in the establishment of free dental clinics throughout the region: Synanon in Santa Monica, dental services at L.A. Free Clinic, a dental clinic for Native Americans and one at Union Rescue Mission on skid row.
The clinics serve patients -- adults and children -- who sometimes have never seen a dentist before. For patients who are ashamed to laugh because of the poor condition of their teeth or who are in pain, free care can open the door to a new, more confident life.
"You don't have much esteem if you don't have your front teeth," Goldstein said in a 2000 Business Wire story. "Most of the people we see need really extensive work. We see a lot of missing teeth and decay. Some of these people haven't seen the dentist for 20 years, and they don't brush their teeth."
Serving those in need was more than a job for Goldstein, it was a crucial element of his life's philosophy, said his son, Jeffrey Goldstein.
