Survival is literally in Charlie Lustman’s blood.
Born as the son of a Holocaust survivor in Munich, Germany on May 8, 1965, the 20th Anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, Charlie moved with his family to Los Angeles, California at a very young age. While growing up there, Charlie realized he had a passion for both music and entertainment.
They were passions that would help define his life, through higher education at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, stints as a traveling and performing musician in New York City, Los Angeles and throughout Europe, and even as the owner/operator of a silent film theater in Hollywood.
But in 2006, life for Charlie changed in a way he could never have imagined.
“I had a little bump in my gum line. I went to the dentist, and the dentist looked at it and said, ‘I don’t know what that is. I think you need to see a periodontist.’ So I went to see the periodontist and he also said, ‘I don’t know what that is.’ Which made me very nervous at that point,” Charlie said.
On the periodontist’s recommendation, the growth was removed and sent to a laboratory for testing. When the test results came back, they diagnosed Charlie as having a very rare form of osteosarcoma, or bone cancer, in his upper-jaw.
