BODY WATCH : Q&A; : Filling a Newfound Need : After 28 years of joint dental practice in Hollywood, Drs. Helyn and Jarvis Luechauer are taking their show on the road. They plan to run a mobile practice for Bay Area seniors.
Drs. Helyn and Jarvis Luechauer have been married for 51 years. They’ve worked side by side as dentists for 28 years in Hollywood. Recently, they closed their office, poised for an eventual move to San Francisco, where they plan to open a mobile practice. Before they take off for another adventure, we caught up with Dr. Helyn, 73, and 80-year-old “Dr. Lick.” (“Because the last name is so impossible,” says Helyn, who is the talkative one . ) They held still long enough to share a few of their thoughts on dentistry, marriage, feminism and cabinetmaking.
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Question: You’ve been married more than 50 years and you have a joint dental practice. How do you do manage?
Helyn: We have personalities that work together pretty well. We have a strong commitment to marriage and fidelity, so even when the times are rough--and they usually are when we’re remodeling a home--we say, “Go cool off a little bit” and a couple of days later we get everything worked out again. Hard work goes into making the relationship work. It isn’t easy. . . . Before we got married, he said “I’m never going to support you.” He was really a hardheaded old German, I’ll tell you. But he did give a lot. I entered into a man’s field at a time when I was one of 50 women in the U.S. that was in dental school. He did teach me how to stand up and fight for myself.
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Q: Do you think it’s unique for a married couple to work so close together?
Helyn: We’re unique because we have a holistic practice where each one of us has specific duties. It’s evolved that way. He’s the great dentist. He does all the mechanical kinds of things. I do all of the nutritional counseling and body chemistry. A management team told us to have a division of responsibilities and don’t cross over the line. We haven’t.
Jarvis: It’s been good because I had somebody to confer with. That’s a great inner strength.
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Q: Do you divvy up house chores?
Helyn: He gets his own breakfast. I have a little (saying): “Him who eats cooks.” I make gallons of soup or easy casseroles for dinner. We have rather traditional assignment of duties. I don’t feel it’s necessary to mow the front lawn just because I’m a capable woman. And he doesn’t do anything about the laundry except to say “How come I don’t have any socks?”
Jarvis: Oh, I do the laundry too.
Helyn: Yeah, when I’m not here. For the last 11 years I’ve gone to England every summer for four to eight weeks. He bachs, and when I come back he goes off for a month of fishing, a safari or an archeological dig.
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Q: So your successful partnership is due in part to separate vacations?
Helyn: It evolved slowly. For 35 years I went with him. Just felt like I wasted my time. It was a question of my sanity or no marriage at all, so I just announced that I was going. It’s not a totally comfortable relationship yet, but it’s workable. I don’t know any marriage that’s 100% full agreement.
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Q: You’re passionate about a healthy life?
Helyn: I had breast cancer--a radical mastectomy 20 years ago. We were fooling around with nutrition like most people. Lick didn’t want me to die. I didn’t want to die. We made a vow to learn as much as we could and the results were fantastic. The energy and the brain didn’t deteriorate. The memory didn’t subside. Vitamins and carefulness about eating paid off.
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Q: What do you eat?
Jarvis: Steak, roast, hamburger. But lamb, oh, that’s my favorite. A real old original red meat. The nutrition that we’re suggesting is the caveman’s nutrition because he was a healthy animal.
Helyn: Forget all this crap that you’re getting in the media today about what constitutes a good diet. Lick and I are hunters and gatherers. We’re meat and vegetable eaters. We don’t eat sugar, milk or wheat products.
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Q: You must exercise. You’re both incredibly fit.
Helyn: We insist on a daily exercise routine. We use the pool daily. Our bathroom is a great big room with cross-country skiing equipment, stand-up bicycle, trampolines, weight machines. We’re both skiers. We couldn’t understand all these middle-aged people whose kids were telling them they’re too old to ski and they accepted that.
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Q: Any children?
Helyn: No. We didn’t want any. Lick’s brother died and left us with two teen-age nephews. Those boys are really like our kids. The youngest even followed us into dentistry. And we have two dogs, Boogie and Lexy.
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Q: How did you meet?
Helyn: During the war in the shipyard. I was a lonely little welder (during World War II in the Bay area). He was this foreman strutting around the yard in his big tin hat. He was making an absolute fool out of himself over this very beautiful woman, but I decided to make a run for him. I set him up. We rode back-and-forth on the train so I worked it out that when he got on there was only one seat and it was next to me. Not everybody has a skilled cabinetmaker for a husband.
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Q: How did you acquire that skill, Jarvis?
Jarvis: My father was a carpenter. I grew up with a hammer in my hands. As early as I can remember if we didn’t have something, we made it. I still do that.
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Q: So you started out as a cabinetmaker and switched over to dentistry?
Jarvis: Well, we were building custom homes and furniture, working 14 to 16 hours a day. I looked around and couldn’t see anybody 65 years old. I said there’s got to be an easier way to make a living. I’d flunked out of college and spent four years in New York barely getting by as a singer. She wanted me to go back to school and I did too. So I went to Loyola of Chicago. I was the old man there.
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Q: How do you work and live together and maintain your sanity?
Helyn: I could not stand to be with him or he with me 24 hours a day. We’d be berserk. We have zones in our (Hollywood Hills) house. He has his workshop and his sitting room upstairs with all of his books. That’s his. My library and sewing room are mine. Also, I’m involved in about 50 organizations, including the DAR. He’s a baritone soloist with the Chanters, the Shriner’s men’s vocal group.
Jarvis: (And) I belong to the Masons.
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Q: What difference did you see between your patients in Northern California and here?
Helyn: Down here everyone is cosmetic, looks and health conscious. Up there they were tough old geezers.
Jarvis: You couldn’t kill them up there. They were tough. I came down here and I had a whole new lesson to learn--they couldn’t take it. You have to treat them with kid gloves.
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Q: So now you two are pulling up stakes and leaving L.A. Why?
Helyn: It’s time to go. When your holistic dental practice teaches patients how to take care of themselves, they don’t need very much dentistry, so one constantly has to have a source of new patients. Also, new patients see 80- and 73-year-olds and they think, “My God, they’re going to kick the bucket in six months.” Our practice has diminished simply because we can’t hold the new patients. It’s time to turn the work over to a younger person.
Jarvis: We’re dinosaurs. When we’re gone, there isn’t going to be any more like us. Dentistry’s going into the Dark Ages because of third-party intervention. We can only do what the insurance company will pay for. I can’t practice if the Dental Society doesn’t like the way we practice. They don’t want preventive care because it affects their pocketbook. That’s part of the reason we’re getting out of dentistry.
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Q: You’ve never mentioned the word retirement .
Helyn: We’ve bought a home in Vallejo. We’re going to lift the house in the air so we can build a whole new story underneath. Dentistry will sit idle until we can get the cement out from underneath our fingernails and the hammered thumbs heal. It’s bothered me that convalescent homes, care facilities and retirement communities don’t have adequate dental coverage. We bought a trailer and fitted it out as a mobile dental clinic. We’ll cover Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties.
Jarvis: We have lightweight mobile equipment. We’ll practice hygiene in the trailer or we’ll roll the equipment inside to the patient.
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Q: Jarvis, what do you love best about Helyn?
Jarvis: Helyn.
Q: And you, Helyn?
Helyn: His love for me, his steadiness, and I couldn’t live without his mechanical ability.