Former journalist celebrating 30 years with Onondaga County Medical Society

By Jane McChesney

When Gerald N. Hoffman was a student at Cathedral High School in Syracuse, he worked as a radio disc jockey interviewing up-and-coming stars such as Nat King Cole and Frankie Lane on “Jerry’s Jamboree.”
Fast forward a few years, and you would have found Hoffman at Syracuse University, broadcasting the first NCAA basketball game on the radio. Or you might have seen his byline in the Syracuse Herald-Journal sports pages, where he wrote for four years.

He spent 25 years in Albany with state Sen. Tarky Lombardi Jr., serving as a senior aide for 15 years. Among the legislative issues he worked on were those concerning health care. He also co-authored a book with Lombardi, “Medical Malpractice, a Legislator’s View.” “When we wrote the book, I garnered such empathy for doctors,” Hoffman, a Syracuse native, said.

Medical, media and governmental relations proved to be a winning combination for Hoffman, who rolled those experiences together in 1981 and joined the Onondaga County Medical Society as chief executive officer and executive vice president.

This year marks his 30th on the job.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to interact with hundreds of caring and highly capable physicians. We are most fortunate to have excellent medical care in our community. I do not think that many people realize that,” Hoffman said recently at his Syracuse office.

Hoffman’s responsibilities include dealing with government officials, interacting with member physicians and their staffs, assisting them with state and federal rules and regulations as well as human resource issues and other areas related to practice management. He also works with members of the executive board at the medical society. The office he oversees handles calls from the public, produces a quarterly magazine and a physicians’ directory, and referral service among other services.

Hoffman, who earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from SU in radio and television and public relations management, lives in the town of Onondaga with his “red-headed Irish” wife, Elizabeth, a Plattsburg native. They have two children and four grandchildren.

“My wife and I were married at St. Rose of Lima Church in North Syracuse on December 28, 1963. Our daughter, Kathleen, was born on Christmas Day, 1968 and our youngest grandson Connor Hoffman was born on December 29, 2003. My wife’s birthday is Jan. 6. Everything coming so close together each year taxes my imagination, and wallet, but I am very happy to do it, and thankful that I have this chore. I have been very blessed in my life in so many ways.”

Hoffman, 74, says that three decades have shown him a lot about Central New York and its people. He’s also seen plenty of change over the years. From the rise of technology, to the success of new medications to quality of care, Hoffman is impressed and pleased to be part of the Central New York health-care system. He sees a region that has kept up with the challenges and responded to patients’ changing needs.

“Our medical society has always been in the forefront when health care challenges come to our community. This was the case in 1987-1988 when local infant mortality reached a level of a third-world country, he said.
“We joined forces in the past year with our County Health Commissioner in addressing the H1N1 epidemic. Dr. Cynthia Morrow, the current health commissioner, often calls upon the medical society to assist her and her department.”

“There are a lot of medical organizations in the Syracuse area but none has as many members as does the medical society. The news media, community leaders and elected officials often call us for our assistance and that of our members,” he said.

The medical society currently has 1,206 members: 1,118 physicians and 88 medical students.
And it is the people that Hoffman returns to again and again. They are what make the job for him.
Proud Syracusan—For 20 years, Hoffman and his wife sat at SU football games next to a couple from Warners, whom they had never known. The couple’s son, only three or four years old when they first met him, later played for SU and the New York Jets. While in prep school, he hurt his knee while playing in the Baltimore-Washington.

When the parents told physicians at Johns Hopkins that they lived in the Syracuse area, they were told that Syracuse has some of the finest orthopedic surgeons in the country, so they went home for the surgery.
More recently, Hoffman spoke with pride and emotion about four OCMS doctors — Michael A. FitzGerald, Robert A. Dracker, F. James Cirincione and Timothy E. McCall — who recently traveled to Haiti to help victims of the earthquake-ravaged island nation.

“Physicians are highly educated people, but they don’t differ that much from the general population. I’m proud and honored to have this opportunity in this town, where health care is the leading industry.”
And Hoffman loves to talk about “this town” — Syracuse. He sees himself as a goodwill ambassador, emphasizing the importance of the symphony, the theater and education. He has much praise for his alma mater, but is just as outspoken in his support for Onondaga Community College, where he sat on the foundation’s board of directors for six years.

Hoffman is the first one in the office in the morning. That’s the way he likes it. The journalist in him takes center stage as he peruses The Post-Standard, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today for relevant medical headlines. His staff pulls the headlines together with a paragraph of text and page number where the story can be found. Members of the medical society get the daily e-mails with online links so they can easily keep with medical news.

Hoffman is a member of the Government Relations Committee of The Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce an is an adviser to the board of directors of the Health Advancement Collaborative of Central New York, a local health-care planning organization. He is also the co-author of a second book, “The History of Local Medical Care, Celebrating Physicians Past and Present, 1806 to 2006.”

“I’m glad I was born, raised and educated here, ‘ said Hoffman, who had an opportunity years ago to work in New York City with CBS, but chose to stay in Syracuse.

As for the future, Hoffman says, “the health-care industry is so important to our area, not only in terms of providing care but as a vital economic engine. In early March, the Medical Society of the State of New York released results of a statewide “Economic Impact Study.”

The study stated that here in Onondaga County, 427 physician practices are driving $1 billion into the county’s economy. These practices employee a total of 5,947 physicians and staff members.

“On the downside, it is discouraging that in recent years, more than 50 percent of young people who complete medical training in our state decide to go elsewhere. The medical liability climate in our state discourages these young physicians. It is not just physicians who bear the liability burden, which also faces all businesses, large and small. New York State will continue to lose physicians and businesses to other states if tort reform is not enacted. As a staff member of the State Senate Health Committee, I first encountered in 1971 the issue of medical liability insurance and its affects on physicians and the cost of care. Nearly 40 years later the issue remains a major concern.

“I remain very interested in politics, which is important for my work in addition to always being an interesting subject,” Hoffman said.

“When I received my bachelor’s degree from Syracuse in 1957, Sen. John F. Kennedy, then the junior senator from Massachusetts, was the featured speaker at commencement. Twelve years later when I received my master’s degree in public relations management from Newhouse School of Public Communications, William F. Buckley was the speaker at commencement. How about that for covering the political spectrum?”

Ann Marie Buerkle adds Congressional campaign to medical, law, business career

By Adele DelSavio

At an age when many of her peers are taking it easy, Ann Marie Buerkle of Syracuse is expanding on her nursing, law, business and political career with a run for U.S. Congress.

Buerkle, 59, has the Republican and Conservative nominations to represent the 25th Congressional district and is pursuing the Independent party nomination.

“I always liked politics. It’s important to be part of the process. The government is really us,” she says.

Buerkle grew up with three brothers and one sister, and first-generation American parents, in Auburn. She attended St. Alphonsus Elementary School and Mount Carmel Catholic High School.

Although she reached young adulthood when the women’s liberation movement was gaining strength and getting vocal, it didn’t influence her early life decisions.

“The revolution passed me by,” she says with a laugh, attributing her unawareness to living in a small town and in a traditional family where gender roles were well-defined. Teaching, nursing and the convent were the three career paths open to young women in that world, she says. She got married two weeks out of nursing school, in 1972.

“I was late coming to some realizations,” she says. One came in 1991, when she was 40 and entered Syracuse University’s School of Law. “It was the first time someone said, ‘You can think.’ Sometimes, as I was going to classes or walking in the halls at law school, I’d feel it was unbelievable I could be doing this.”

All four of her grandparents came to the United States from Italy and became American citizens. “They came from small Italian villages, and they never learned to speak English,” she remembers.

For more than 60 years her father sold insurance for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. While raising his family and selling insurance, he owned and ran Auburn’s Mohican Market and roller skating rinks in Syracuse, North Syracuse and Auburn. One of the rinks—the Rollerdome in Auburn—is still in business.
“He was the quintessential entrepreneur,” Buerkle says of her father, who passed away two years ago at 85. Her 89-year-old mother still lives in Auburn.

Hard work—Buerkle spent her teenage years working in the roller rinks and in Mohican Market, absorbing her parents’ ethic of hard work and commitment. She gives her parents credit for her other personal values: individual responsibility and personal integrity.

Like her father, she is a business owner, running a small commercial real estate business for more than 20 years.

Buerkle earned her RN degree in 1972 from St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing in Syracuse. She worked in medical-surgical nursing at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. At Columbia-Presbyterian, she specialized in trauma treatment.

She calls working at the much larger hospital in the much larger city an educational experience and a life experience. “All of a sudden there was this realization of a whole other world,” she says.

In 1976, she moved with her husband back to Central New York, settling in Syracuse, and they had their first child. She attended Le Moyne College and in 1977 got involved in the pro-life movement, helping establish a Friends for Life chapter in Syracuse.

She approached her speaking and educational role in Friends for Life from a medical perspective. “I talked about fetal development and told the audience, ‘I’m giving you the facts so you will be able to make an informed decision if and when you need to do so,’” she says.

She went on to have six children, and when they were young she worked as a substitute school nurse in Syracuse. “This was from the late ‘80s to early ‘90s. It was a way to keep my hand in nursing as well as be there for my kids,” she says. During the 1980s she also ran for the Onondaga County Legislature.

Her oldest child was 15 and her youngest was 4 when she entered Syracuse University’s School of Law in 1991. She brought her 4-year-old, Caroline, to class. Now 23, Caroline lives in Syracuse and is helping her mother with her campaign. Another daughter, Christine, a graphic design artist, designed logos for the campaign.

Once Buerkle graduated, she worked for a medical malpractice firm for two years and joined the Women’s Bar Association. In 1994 she was elected to the Syracuse Common Council.

Special-needs advocacy—In 2009, she became certified as a member of the Surrogate Decision-making Committee for the New York State Commission on Quality of Care. The committee reviews medical decisions made for legally incompetent patients who have no family members to act as advocates.

She has a personal reason for her interest in those with special needs. Her sister Mary, four years older, struggled with multiple sclerosis for years and then died during Buerkle’s first year of law school. “I watched what she went through in high school, limping and dropping things and feeling awkward. Eventually she became a quadriplegic. She had a spirit that a lot of people with functioning arms and legs don’t have,” Buerkle says.

In addition to her advocacy work with the decision-making committee, she counsels abused women at Syracuse’s Vera House and provides volunteer legal services for the Onondaga County Bar Association’s pro bono program. “So many people don’t have access to resources,” she notes.

To concentrate on her campaign, she is taking a leave from her position as assistant New York state attorney general, a post she has held since 1997. In that role she focuses on health care law and fights for money owed by insurance companies to the State University of New York Upstate University Hospital, money owed as a result of the companies’ rejection of patients’ medical claims.

Buerkle’s marriage ended in 1997. “I wish it had worked,” she says without elaborating. Of her four grown daughters and two grown sons, only one—Caroline—lives in New York. The others—Christine, Amy, Tom, Betsy and Gus—left New York to pursue better career opportunities, three in Austin, Texas. Despite the distance, Buerkle, her children and her 11 grandchildren remain close.

Her friend, Anne Costa of Baldwinsville, says she admires the way Buerkle has lived her life and her courage in defending her beliefs. Costa says, “She has consistently stood for the values and ideals upon which this country was founded. We need someone like that in Washington. I believe that Ann Marie is that someone,” Costa says.

Entrepreneur celebrates 35 years of ownership of a Skaneateles
landmark, the Sherwood Inn

By Mary Beth Roach

Bill Eberhardt sits in one of the dining rooms of the Sherwood Inn, the historic establishment in downtown Skaneateles; he looks out onto the scene across the street — the sweeping panoramic view of Skaneateles Lake — and says that this vista is one of the reasons for the success of the inn he took over 35 years ago.
And from the tall windows that line the front of this landmark building on West Genesee Street, the view is beautiful, to be sure — the park with its picturesque gazebo, the lake and the rolling hills in the background.
But there’s a lot more to the success of this legendary inn and restaurant, which has become the flagship of Eberhardt’s thriving hospitality company. Much of it has to do with the owner’s diligence and his focus on the details.

At the age of 67, having spent decades building a prosperous business and figuring prominently in the development or redevelopment of many properties in the Central New York area, Eberhardt still finds his work rewarding, regardless of the inevitably busy days. He still enjoys it and receives a great deal of satisfaction from it.

“I don’t work as hard as I used to. I am trying to blend in all of my other interests,” he says.

And his interests are many and varied — whether it’s fly-fishing in the quiet waters of the Adirondacks, climbing the region’s highest peak, hunting, tennis, boating or helping to restore a vintage vehicle.

He’s scaled mountains in Europe, yet he seems to have an affinity for the Adirondacks and the adventures and the relaxation that this area can offer.

He’s a member of the Adirondack 46’er Club, a group of climbers who has completed the Adirondack High Peaks, 46 mountains ranging from Couchsachraga Peak, with its 3,820-foot elevation, to the 5,344-foot Mount Marcy.

It was an achievement that was about 20 years in the making. Some of the mountains he has climbed multiple times, he says, due in part to the spectacular views they offer. Others, he says, were more challenging, taking more than a day to climb. “But you did them to put them on your list.” he adds.

When not on one of the area’s mountaintops, Eberhardt might be found on one the Adirondacks’ many crystal-clear lakes or streams or on a hiking trail. This outdoorsman also belongs to a fishing club in the Adirondacks, and he has hiked the Northville-Lake Placid Trail, which is by no means any little walk in the woods. This 130-plus-mile wilderness trail stretches from the southern Adirondack foothills to the High Peaks region in the north.

He owns a couple of boats, and he recently assisted in the restoration of a 1965 Porsche, a project he became involved with in Florida, and he’s eager to get the vehicle on the road here.

Within the past several years, two of his five children, Ben and Meredith, have come back to the area, joining him in the business, and he delights in their participation. Son Brian is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, daughter Stephanie is in the defense industry in Washington, D.C., and another daughter, Mia, is graduating from Skaneateles High School.

Ben returned after serving 12 years in the military; he is working at the Colgate Inn in Hamilton, and is beginning to become involved in Skaneateles.

The elder Eberhardt signed a lease in 2004 with Colgate University to manage the Colgate Inn. Aside from the fact that the place provided an opportunity for his son to join him, he also enjoys the atmosphere surrounding that establishment. “The families that come and go, and the kids, and the activities, and the sports teams, it’s fun; it’s a great property,” he said.

Meredith came back about 12 months ago, after working at Disney World, among other places. She claimed that the Sherwood brought her back, and she is working at the inn. One recent afternoon, she took a break from her duties at the Sherwood to talk about her return to Central New York and about her dad.

“I keep coming back because there’s just a feeling here. It’s a home away from home,” she said, adding that the staff is like a very large extended family. “This is where I grew up.”

“He [my dad] said if I wanted to learn the business, I’d have to start in housekeeping and work my way throughout,” she said, “So I did every position in the front of the house, everything with the exception of the kitchen.”

This hands-on education has proven beneficial, enabling her to step in and help out wherever needed.
While Eberhardt was discussing his involvement in restoring the motor on the Porsche, Meredith interjects that this is an example of his thoroughness.

“He’ll look at every corner and adjust. This is where I’m getting the ‘meticulous’ because he takes everything and looks at the detail and makes little adjustments, little tweaks.”

While her comments elicit a chuckle from Dad, it’s his focus on the particulars that may be a big reason for the many rave reviews that his inns receive.

For example, condenastportfolio.com writes that the Sherwood “has been meticulously restored to the beauty of a bygone era. . . with pegged wood floors, antique furniture and fine wood detailing.”

That the rooms are unique in their design and décor, and that such attention has been given to furnishings and appointments are what guests find appealing.

Since the Sherwood Inn opened in 1974, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people have crossed its threshold in downtown Skaneateles, including President Bill Clinton and former First Lady Hillary Clinton, and a host of other notables.

Mrs. Clinton has stayed in one of the 25 guest rooms located on the upper two floors of the Inn. And if the stories Eberhardt has heard are true, Vice President Joe Biden worked at the Sherwood part-time while attending SU law school.

Eberhardt hails from Buffalo, but went to high school in the Dewitt area, graduating from Syracuse University in 1965, with a business degree before entering the Army. He later interviewed with banks and corporations for junior management positions, but no one was hiring, he said.

“That’s how I ended up in this business because I was working my way through college,” he said. I needed to do that. . . . My father died when I was young, so this was the vehicle that I used to make the bridge.”

So he went back to the Walter White’s Restaurant, that he had worked for, among others, while in college.
“The White family owned it,” he said, “and that’s who I really learned the trade from.”

He stayed with the restaurant, helping the family open the one in Fairmount and then one in North Syracuse before deciding to branch out on his own.

The Walter White restaurants were well-known in Central New York — places, Eberhardt says, where people went and had good times. While still working in Fairmount, he and his young family moved into a farm in Skaneateles, and it was during this time that he saw the Sherwood Inn in a dilapidated condition. “It was all boarded up, closed up. A big piece of plywood on the door with the number ‘4’ and the word ‘SALE,’” he said. And although in rough shape, Eberhardt saw its potential and started making inquiries.

He began the process of purchasing it in 1973 and opened in 1974.

“It wasn’t easy,” he said, “but I believed in it, obviously, and that was it.”

And since that time, Eberhardt has renovated the whole property. Every year they work on something, he added.

After the Sherwood, Eberhardt opened Phoebe’s Garden Café, now called Phoebe’s Restaurant and Coffee Lounge, on East Genesee Street and Irving Avenue, just down the hill from his alma mater. Phoebe’s has a rich — albeit, lively — history. The restaurant’s Web site says that according to local lore, the building was originally a brothel, whose madam was named — yes, you guessed it — Phoebe.

But the majority of his businesses are in and around the Skaneateles area, where he also makes his home.

During his three-plus decades since opening the Sherwood, Eberhardt has helped to reshape the main thoroughfare in Skaneateles, as well. Through his company, Dining Associates, formed in the late 1970s, and together with various business partners, he has built, redeveloped, opened, managed or operated at least five businesses along or immediately off West Genesee Street in this Finger Lakes community.

These businesses are: The Packwood House, which opened in 2003 a half block away from the Sherwood, on the site of the former Skaneateles Post Office, with a Talbot’s shop on the street level and 19 contemporary suites above. The four-room Village Inn on Jordan Street, which his company manages. In the Seitz Building on Genesee Street is the Japanese restaurant, Kabuki, which reopened recently following a renovation. The Bluewater Grill, across the street, which has a scenic view of the lake; Riddler’s is a newsstand-confection-tobacco shop, also on Jordan Street; and Patisserie on Hannum Street.

And not too far from the Skaneateles business district is the Hobbit Hollow Farm, a five-room bed and breakfast in a turn-of-the century farmhouse that sits on 1,000 acres on West Lake Road, overlooking the lake.

He notes that because of the various styles of the properties, he and his staff can provide guests with a greater variety of accommodations.

While his daughter might attribute his success to his diligence, he, credits his success, in large measure, to good managers and partners, quality staff, and well, “working at it for 35 years.”