James C. Marsters

Marsters was born April 5, 1924, in Norwich, New York, to pharmaceutical executive Guy Marsters and his wife Anna Belle, a nurse.

When he was very young, Marsters lost his hearing to scarlet fever and measles. However, he learned to speak and to read lips. He graduated from Wright Oral School for the Deaf in New York City in 1943. It was there that he met John Tracy, the son of Spencer Tracy. In 1947 Marsters received a chemistry degree from Union College in Schenectady, New York.

Marsters married Joan Tausik, an artist who was also deaf (they later divorced), and went to work in her father's tie factory. It was Tausik's father who suggested he should become a dentist. Though Marsters' test scores were high, dental schools rejected him because of his deafness. After two and a half years of applying, New York University agreed to admit him on a provisional basis with the understanding that he would receive no special assistance. He graduated from New York University in 1952. He used to claim he could hear some, to help calm the fears of some of his dental school professors. He also flew an airplane between two cities where he practiced, and he would claim his radio wasn't working right and ask air traffic controllers to use lights to guide him.

John Tracy, whose name is on a Los Angeles clinic for hearing-impaired children encouraged Marsters to become an orthodontist, and in 1954, after studies at USC, he began his Pasadena practice. Soon after that, he married Alice Amelia Dorsey, the director of the clinic at John Tracy Clinic's preschool. Marsters had three children—James Marsters Jr., a chemist; Jean Marsters, a doctor; and Guy Marsters, a musician. Alice died in 2003. The couple had two grandchildren. Marsters died July 28, 2009, of a heart ailment.