Dr. Kohler was born at a very young age amid ranches and walnut groves of the San Fernando Valley before it became an LA suburb. Growing up just inland from Malibu beach instilled in this original “Valley Boy” a lifelong love affair with the sea. Adding the influence of the relatively new invention- “television”, with such daily series as “Sea Power”, The Silent Service” and “Men of Annapolis”, it naturally followed that this impressionable youth would set a life at sea as his goal. Even though the Vietnam War was at its height, Dr. Kohler turned down a National Merit Scholarship with a pre-dental major in favor of an appointment to the US Naval Academy. ENS Kohler’s first assignment following commissioning was the destroyer escort USS Ramsey, which he joined on the “gun line” in the Gulf of Tonkin. After returning to the Western Pacific to participate in the evacuation of Saigon and Cambodia, and in the rescue of SS Mayaguez and her crew, LT Kohler was transferred to Navy Special Warfare Group One where he supported SEAL and UDT Operations as skipper of a fast patrol combatant (a PT boat).
Changing course, LT Kohler was accepted to the University of Pittsburgh, School of Dental Medicine and after graduation he reported to the Naval Dental Center in San Diego, and soon after was transferred to USS New Orleans (an amphibious assault ship). Two years and two western Pacific deployments later, LCDR Kohler was assigned as assistant director of the Recruit Training Center dental clinic until he started a year long Advanced Clinical Practice program in oral surgery.
As payback for training, Dr. Kohler accepted “hardship” orders to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Hawaii. In 1990 He was deployed with the Marines to Desert Storm where he served on a trauma team at the USMC version of a MASH unit. After four years, and about 250 scuba dives, CDR Kohler was accepted into the residency program in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Naval Medical Center, Portsmouth, VA.
Again, extraordinary circumstances forced him to accept another “difficult” set of orders to the birthplace of Navy Dentistry, the US Naval Academy, where CAPT Kohler spent the last four years of his naval career treating midshipmen and removing wisdom teeth in the same room where he lost his some 28 years before. And so, with a certain poetic symmetry (or irony?), a career came full circle and ended where it began.
Dr. Kohler is a Diplomate of the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, A fellow of the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons and the American College of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons.
He has been teaching staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, and the Navy Medical Center, Portsmouth, VA. He was chief of Dental Services aboard the hospital ship Comfort. He currently holds a staff appointment at the Washington Hospital Center and teaches Advanced Cardiac Life Support for Metro ACLS and is a mock board examiner for Military Oral Surgeons aspiring to Board Certification.
Dr. Kohler enjoys just about anything to do with the water including Scuba Diving (he is a PADI instructor), sailing, boating, fishing, and kayaking.(During dental school, he led white water raft trips down the Cheat River of West Virginia)
Dr. Kohler has been married for over 30 years to the former Amy Lynne Ketzel of New Castle, Pennsylvania, who, as a beautiful Navy Nurse, stole his heart many years ago. They have three sons, 1st/LT Mike Kohler, USMC, Andrew (University of Maryland) and Jonathan (University of Maryland).
Dr. and Mrs. Kohler reside in Annapolis where Dr. Kohler continues to practice Oral Surgery at his new office, Annapolis Oral Surgery.
|
|
