Dr. Marshall Lawrence Horwitz, DDS

Gratitude
On this page I would like to thank some of the many wonderful people who have had a tremendous impact on my life.
First and foremost, I have been blessed with a wonderful wife and two great kids. Anyone who can be married to me for 25 years has to be a saint. My daughter is a biomedical/electrical/computer engineering student and though she looks like me, I sometimes question whether I am the father as her IQ exceeds the sum of my wife’s and mine. My son has exposed me to the world of art, drama, theater and music. He is exceptionally talented in these fields, areas I know nothing about. I have a newfound appreciation of the arts because of him.
I had the privilege of spending my high school years at Mount Hermon School in Mount Hermon, Massachusetts. The school at the time was all boys, but has since become coed and is now called Northfield Mount Hermon. I was a boarding student there and learned some wonderful lessons in life. I would recommend anyone considering a private …high school to consider NMH. The two most influential people in my career there were Joe Kordana and Carroll Bailey. All students had work jobs at school for about 5 hours per week. Mr. Kordana was my work job supervisor in my junior year and he inoculated in me the values of hard physical work . He also taught me the value of pride in hard work. This lesson has stuck with me whether I am doing a little one surface restoration or a complex prosthetic case. Pride in work is such a wonderful thing. Carroll Bailey gave me the keys to a successful academic career in all of three sentences. One September evening he called a meeting of all the boarders in the dorm. "Boys", he said, "if you have a test on Thursday then study one third on Monday, one third on Tuesday and one third on Wednesday. If you don’t know it by 10PM the night before the test, you might as well stop studying. You’re not going to help yourself staying up all night cramming." His advice was right on target. It served me well at Mount Hermon, University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern University Dental School. I pass his wisdom along to all my teenage patients.
When I first came to Worcester in 1978 I was blessed to be mentored by Dr. Leo Berg, an oral surgeon. Words just can’t express my gratitude to Leo for all his wisdom he imparted to me. Leo was a great teacher, a great friend and a great role model. He taught me that building relationships with people was so much more important than building up a bill. He always treated patients with respect. His reputation was untarnished and he was so respected by others. The ultimate compliment someone could every pay to me would be for that person to say: "Marshall Horwitz was half the person Leo Berg was." There will never be another Leo Berg in my life. I hope I can be a Leo Berg to someone else.
During my first mission to China in September 1994 I became exceptionally frustrated with my interpreters. So much time was wasted I decided to study the Chinese language. In 1997 I began lessons with Liu Long Ping. Mr. Liu was very patient with me as I struggled to get the right tones. Chinese is a tonal language, where different tones of the same word can have completely different meanings. After 6 months of intensive study, I returned to China on my next mission and probably doubled the number of patients I treated. I am reasonably conversant in a dental setting and can work my way around other situations. I also get great service in Chinese restaurants.
I have had the privilege of working with some terrific specialists here in Worcester. These colleagues and friends have made my professional career so much more rewarding, and my personal life so much richer. I am very fortunate to have affiliated myself with professionals who place patient service at the top of the agenda.
Over the past 28 years I have had the pleasure and honor of working with some great employees. I decided at an early age that I wasn’t cut out to have giant office, bouncin