Dr. James R. Hooley; Dean of UCLA Dental School

Dr. James R. Hooley, 67, former dean of the UCLA Dental School who worked to improve the status of dentistry. A native of Stillwater, Minn., Hooley studied oral surgery at St. Louis University and then taught at the University of Washington. He came to Los Angeles to head the UCLA Dental School in 1981 and remained until 1986. Dentistry, he told The Times in 1983, “suffers from a horrible public relations problem.” He said dental stereotypes were wrongly encouraged by cartoons and comic strips implying that dentists studied teeth only because they couldn’t qualify as medical students, had a high rate of suicide, and enjoyed inflicting pain on hapless patients. At UCLA, Hooley countered those stereotypes, often commenting on how hard students worked and the debts they incurred to become qualified dentists. He wrote manuals on oral surgery and hospital dental practice, and helped instruct dentists on ways to avoid infection from patients with AIDS. During Operation Desert Storm in 1990, Hooley was called to duty as a Navy reservist and served as acting chairman of the department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Naval Dental School in Bethesda, Md. From 1992 to 1995 he served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Independence. Last year, Hooley worked with Health Volunteers Overseas in Zimbabwe. On Oct. 23 in Pacific Palisades.