Leonard Cushner; invented camera for orthodontists

LEONARD CUSHNER

The Cushner Orthographic was not the largest contraption to emerge from the workshop in Dr. Leonard A. Cushner's Brookline basement. That honor might have gone to the docks that he built for the family's camp on a lake in Maine and then hoisted out into the daylight with ropes and pulleys.

But the Orthographic had a legacy that reached beyond the Boston area. Jury-rigging a camera by combining an expensive, precise lens with a Polaroid body, Dr. Cushner created a tool that turned out accurate, instant photographs, helping orthodontists mold better mouths for their patients. And the camera was invented because he liked to tinker at his workbench.

"The tinkering part is the key, because that was my Dad's world," Stuart Cushner of Norton said. "He tinkered with everything. He was of the mind that if someone put something together, he could figure out how to take it apart and rebuild it."

Dr. Cushner, who for decades ran an orthodontics practice in Newton Center and in Boston before that, died Thursday of complications of surgery performed 10 days earlier. He was 82 and had lived in Brookline.

A straight-on photograph of each patient's face plus profile shots help orthodontists determine a diagnosis and plan treatment, said Dr. Cushner's son, who also is an orthodontist.

"It's one thing to say I can move the teeth, but the most important thing is to move the teeth so it fits with the face," he said. "Having photographs is really important when you diagnose."

Polaroid's instant photography allowed orthodontists to quickly review each patient's needs, he said, but the standard-issue lens was not suited for dental work.

"You want a close-up and you want to fill the frame with the face, but if you get that close with a regular mass-market lens, the image was distorted," he said.

So in the 1960s, his father came up with the idea to graft a more sophisticated lens onto a Polaroid camera body. Few consumers would have wanted to spend more money for such detailed images, Stuart Cushner said, but his father found that other orthodontists were interested.

An only child, Dr. Cushner grew up in Roxbury. He graduated from Boston Latin School and from Tufts College in a program that was accelerated because of World War II. He also graduated from the Tufts School of Dental Medicine and served as a lieutenant and dentist in the US Navy, based in Virginia.

Dr. Cushner initially saw patients at an office in the Colonial Building in downtown Boston, where his father had a dentistry practice. He moved his practice to Newton Center in 1960, his son said, and retired in the early 1990s.

In the 1940s, Dr. Cushner met Tema Kaplan at a birthday party and learned that her family had property on Lake Messalonskee, outside Waterville, Maine, where Dr. Cushner liked to fish.

"That night, she told her friend she was going to marry him," their son said.

Still, he added, "the story goes that they went up to Maine and she rowed the boat while he fished, and that was the deal closer."

They married 59 years ago.

A musician since childhood, Dr. Cushner played the piano and half a dozen other instruments: woodwinds, brass, and percussion. And cameras were not the only things he made or did to share with others.

"His other favorite pastime was that he had a Jeep Wagoneer and he always had a snowplow," his son said. "He couldn't wait until it snowed so he could get up at 4 in the morning and plow the driveways of anyone he knew. If they asked if they could pay him, he would say, 'Just make a donation to Tufts Dental.' "

A gardener, Dr. Cushner put up shelves in his basement where seedlings sprouted under lights until it was time for planting outdoors.

"He'd grow pickles, and we'd call him Pickle Lenny," his son said of the half-sour kosher pickles his father would bottle and give away to friends.

Along with spending workdays adjusting the bite in the mouths of patients, Dr. Cushner taught aspiring orthodontists at the Tufts School of Dental Medicine one day a week for 35 years, his son said. And many evenings after work, he descended into the basement, which held a darkroom for his photography and a work area for his projects.

There he built cabinets, acrylic holders for nearly any purpose, and, of course, the docks for the camp on Lake Messalonskee, where he spent each summer.

"He would be up at the lake the minute the ice was out, and he'd be putting them in, standing in water up to his waist, no wet suit," his son said. "It didn't faze him."

In addition to his wife and son Stuart, Dr. Cushner leaves another son, Andrew of Wellesley; two granddaughters; and two grandsons.

A service has been held.