Dr. Edmund E. Jeansonne, First Lsu Dental Dean, Dies Times Picayune 01-30-1996 ************************************************* Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Dr. Edmund E. Jeansonne, the first dean of the Louisiana State University School of Dentistry, died Saturday at Touro Infirmary of complications from a stroke. He was 79. Dr. Jeansonne, a New Orleans native, actually was LSU's dental dean twice, and he also managed to be dean of two dental schools at once. He was dean of the Loyola University School of Dentistry in 1966 when Loyola announced it would close the school. Upon hearing the news, Gov. John McKeithen asked the LSU Board of Supervisors to incorporate a dental school into the LSU Medical Center, and Dr. Jeansonne was named its first dean. Thus, he was presiding over the shutdown of Loyola's dental school while overseeing the building of LSU's. In the latter job, he had to recruit faculty, supervise curriculum development and monitor construction. The school's first class entered in September 1968. Dr. Jeansonne retired in 1974 to take a six-month sabbatical in London to study and teach dental ceramics, a field in which he had conducted extensive research. But his successor, Dr. Allen Copping, was named the LSU Medical Center chancellor within months, and Dr. Jeansonne was asked to be dean once again when he returned from England. This time, he held the post for two years. "I don't think that anyone has done more for dental education in Louisiana than Dr. Edmund Jeansonne," Copping said Monday. "All of us in the dental profession are saddened by his death. We have lost a dear friend." A graduate of Warren Easton High School, Dr. Jeansonne joined the Navy Dental Corps after finishing Loyola's dental school in 1938. He was in the corps for 22 years, retiring as a captain and executive officer of the U.S. Naval Medical Center Dental School in Bethesda, Md. From the Navy, he moved to Georgetown University's dental school in Washington, D.C., where he spent two years as head of the diagnosis department. He returned to New Orleans to join Loyola's dental faculty. He was named assistant dean and, in 1964, dean. After his second term as dean at LSU, Dr. Jeansonne taught full time as a professor in the prosthodontics department, where students learn to make replacements for missing parts of the mouth and jaw. He retired in 1981 and was named dean emeritus, but he continued teaching part time - for free - for another 10 years. Dr. Jeansonne was a fellow of the American College of Dentists and the International College of Dentists and an honorary fellow of the Academy of General Dentistry. He also was a member of a federal commission on the construction and renovation of dental schools. He was a member of the American Association of Dental Consultants, the American Academy of Restorative Dentistry, the International Society of Dental Ceramics, the C. Edmund Kells Odontological Society, the International Association of Dental Research, Xi Psi Phi dental fraternity, Omicron Kappa Upsilon national dental honor fraternity, and the American, Louisiana and New Orleans dental associations. Survivors include his wife, Mildred Hatrel Jeansonne; two daughters, Mildred J. Spahn and Suzanne J. Duplantier; two sons, Dr. Edmund E. Jeansonne Jr. and James H. Jeansonne; a sister, Ursula J. Rupp; and eight grandchildren. A Mass will be said today at noon at Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home, 5100 Pontchartrain Blvd. Visitation will begin at 10:30 a.m. Burial will be in Lake Lawn Park Mausoleum.