Norman C. Bitter, DDS, was born in Fresno, California, of immigrant Germans from Russia on the Volga River (the German Republic in Russia). He attended the University of Southern California and received a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree. He served a rotating internship at the U.S. Naval Hospital, San Diego, 1958-59, and served as a dentist and Protestant lay leader on the USS Dixie (1959-61). He returned to Fresno to a private dental practice. He taught part-time at the University of California, San Francisco (1969-70), and was a part-time associate clinical professor at the University of Southern California (1974-94). He performed dental research and published fourteen international dental articles. In 1974 he was called by God to do short-term missionary dentistry with fourteen trips to Honduras, Guatemala, Roatan Island, and three trips to Bosnia. He is the author of Putting Wisdom to Work: Ecclesiastes.