Dr. Joe Cappuccio, past ADA president, dies at 87

Dr. Joseph P. Cappuccio, a past ADA president celebrated by all who knew him for his passion for dentistry and his love of life, died May 23 after an apparent heart attack.

An oral and maxillofacial surgeon from Baltimore, Md., Dr. Cappuccio was 87 years old. He served as ADA president in 1978-79 and was a member of the Board of Trustees representing the Fourth Trustee District from 1971-77. He also was a member of the ADA House of Delegates for 18 years.

“My father had a passion for his field that not many people have,” his daughter and only child, Mary Louise Cappuccio, said of her father.

“He had a great circle of friends in dentistry. He was touched by them, and they were touched by my father. The ADA was his life’s blood.”

Rocella, Dr. Cappuccio’s wife of 49 years, died in 2005.

Born in Rhode Island in 1921, Dr. Cappuccio was an educator, author, lecturer, leader and clinician whose curriculum vitae covers 20 pages. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1943 and his dental degree from the University of Maryland’s Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, Dental School, in 1946. He was Board qualified by the American Board of Oral Surgeons in 1951.

Not long after earning his dental degree, Dr. Cappuccio joined the BCDS graduate faculty in oral surgery and in time rose to a full professorship.

Early in his career, he got involved in organized dentistry, eventually holding some 83 different posts. He was president of the Baltimore City Dental Society, the Maryland State Dental Association, the Middle Atlantic Society of Oral Surgeons, the Maryland Dental Society of Anesthesiology, Omicron Kappa Upsilon, and, of course, the ADA.

He held memberships in scores of dental and health care organizations, including an honorary membership in the American Dental Society of Europe and an associate membership in the American Medical Association.

Among his many honors, Dr. Cappuccio received the Distinguished Service Award of the Maryland State Dental Association in 1984 and the Distinguished Service Award of the Pierre Fauchard Academy in 2008, presented last fall at annual session in San Antonio.

Just days before his death, Dr. Cappuccio was to be presented with the BCDS dean’s Special Recognition Award at the May 15 Honors Convocation Program. Because of ill health, Dr. Cappuccio was unable to attend the ceremony, which honored him for “his tireless commitment to dentistry, our school and its alumni” noted Dr. Christian S. Stohler, the dental school dean.

“I feel that we have lost one of our strongest supporters,” Dr. Stohler said of Dr. Cappuccio. “Dentistry was his passion.”

Dr. Michael Belenky, the dental school’s director of Global Maryland/International Programs, met Dr. Cappuccio in the 1970s, and the two were friends ever after.

Dr. Belenky described his late friend and colleague as “dynamic and active despite his age,” a man of “boundless energy dedicated to the profession of dentistry.”

Another long-time friend, Dr. John Patterson, treasurer of the Endowment Fund of the Alumni Association of BCDS, noted that Dr. Cappuccio was “small of stature” but “a giant of the dental profession.”

He added, “He was on the right side of a lot of issues. His heart was always in the right place. It was never about Joe Cappuccio; it was always about the dental profession.”

A funeral Mass was said for Dr. Cappuccio June 1 at Baltimore’s Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, followed by interment at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium, Md.

Donations in Dr. Cappuccio’s name were being accepted at the Maryland Foundation of Dentistry for the Handicapped and the American Heart Association.