This wasn’t your typical day for Dr. Richard Shereff, who has been practicing dermatology for the past 49 years at the Hunter Circle office just off Owen Drive.
Seems like he’s always been here to examine and treat everything from eczema, psoriasis, acne, rosacea, warts, and those suspicious moles and skin cancers that come our way.
“This is what I do,” Shereff, 81, said Thursday. “It’s kind of become who I am.”
Shereff has loved every day of driving from his Haymount Hill home to this office to see patients by the thousands upon thousands since opening the practice in October of 1977.
“It’s just the whole environment of it,” he said.
It hasn’t just been about being there for his patients.
“I regard a lot of my longstanding patients,” he said, “as friends.”
But Shereff says everything comes to an end sooner or later.
“I am honored to have been able to provide your dermatological care, as well as to many others in this community,” he wrote in a May 1 letter to his patients. “As we approach the 49th anniversary of our serving this community as a dermatologist, solo practice is becoming increasingly challenging and frustrating.
“It has become difficult to provide affordable services and obtain the medications that our patients require. In our current system, we are no longer in charge of those decisions. Meeting our ever-increasing overhead expenses, as a solo practitioner, has also become a concern. Although I have told patients and friends that I have no desire to retire, reality suggests that we should close our office by year’s end.”
Shereff saw his last patients on September 17.
“We will officially close on October 31,” he wrote.
You could feel the angst and lament in his words.
You don’t just walk away from a career you are passionate about and love. It’s not a job. It’s a joy you welcome every day. For Richard Shereff, dermatology has been a rewarding career, and he likely will tell you he wouldn’t change a single day.
Along His Way
Richard Shereff grew up in Forest Hills, New York, some 10 miles from Midtown Manhattan. His father, Abraham Shereff, worked in industrial textiles. His mother, Rose Shereff, was a high school math teacher who insisted on a son giving his best.
“I assumed I would go to college,” he said, “and take over Dad’s business.”
An injured finger around age 13 during a summer camp piqued his interest in medicine, when a doctor allowed Shereff to peruse microscopes in the infirmary.
After graduating from Columbia Grammar School in Upper Manhattan, Shereff enrolled at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, earning a B.A. in biology in 1962.
“I thought I would like to do [medical] research,” he said.
Shereff pursued a master’s degree from Emory University in Atlanta.
“I left after one year to start medical school,” he said at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis.
“It was a three-year, three-month program with a three-month break between basic science classes and the clinic rotations,” he said. “I started seeing patients toward the end of my second year.”
It appeared his medical career would be one of an internist, but …
“I volunteered as a prosector at Charity Hospital in the morgue,” Shereff said. “One of the pathologists had a contact in Hong Kong, where one could buy high-quality photographic equipment greatly discounted. That was the equipment I used to photograph organs and later skin lesions and rashes. I decided I could not be a great diagnostician if you couldn’t recognize a skin lesion or a rash. So, I did a three-month rotation in dermatology.”
Dr. E. William Rosenberg was chief of dermatology at the hospital.
“You seemed to enjoy your rotation here,” Rosenberg told Shereff.
He encouraged Shereff to consider a medical career as a dermatologist.
“I said, ‘I’m flattered, but I’m going to be an internist,’” Shereff told Rosenberg. “I went to New York for my internist residency.”
But dermatology was calling.
He contacted Rosenberg about returning to the University of Tennessee at Memphis.
“A first-year resident had been drafted [into the Army],” Shereff said, “so I did my residency at the University of Tennessee at Memphis in dermatology, and I’ve been happy ever since.”
Along his medical career way, Shereff met Susan Allen while honing his medical skills in Memphis.
“Every Wednesday the Interfaith Association would have a free meal,” he said. “Susan and I would attend that. She was in nursing school.”
She was bright.
She was smart.
She was attractive.
Richard Shereff will tell you he was smitten.
They married on June 6, 1970.
“We went to Brooklyn, New York,” he said. “I did my internal medicine internship at Maimonides Medical Center. Susan was at the coronary care unit at Maimonides. We spent a year there. We went back to Memphis, where I started my dermatological residency. She became head of nursing for cardiac surgery.”
A Soldier and a Decision
With his medical and dermatology training behind, Shereff received a call from Uncle Sam in 1973. He spent three years as chief of dermatology at 2nd General Hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.
“Anyone overseas who needs care is sent there,” he said.
Shereff returned to Fort Bragg in 1976, where he was assigned to Womack Army Hospital until 1977. He remained active in the Army Reserve until retiring December 9, 2004, as a lieutenant colonel.
Shereff planned to become a dermatologist in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1977.
But …
“Susan was working in the Intensive Care Unit and Cardiac Care Unit under Dr. Harold Godwin at Cape Fear Valley Hospital,” he said. “Dr. Godwin put on the full-court press to have me stay here.”
Shereff opened his practice in what once was a three-bedroom home along Hunter Circle.
“From the day we opened our doors, we were slammed,” he said, and Shereff was a compassionate dermatologist when it came to his patients. “You don’t just want to just take care of patients. You really want to care for them.”
Richard and Susan Shereff immersed themselves in the community and became known for hosting gourmet-cooking gatherings with friends at their historic Haymount Hill home and their generosity in supporting The Fayetteville Symphony, the Cape Fear Regional Theatre, and Cape Fear Botanical Garden.
The dermatology practice flourished.
He was a dermatologist with a gentle way, with Susan Shereff assisting in surgeries and maintaining the finances of the ever-growing practice.
‘He Will Be Missed’
“I’ve been a patient of Dr. Shereff for 40 years,” April Smith said. “I started seeing him when I was 15.”
She suffered from systemic acne.
“It was getting pretty bad,” she said. “My mama found him for me. He is my hero. What a wonderful man he is. My husband and our children see him, and my 98-year-old mother-in-law. He removed the cancer on her face. I just love him and always will.”
Dielhl and Pat Jones have been patients for just about all of Shereff’s 49 years here.
“He has burned, scraped and cut stuff off of me,” Dielhl Jones, 78, said. “I spent too much time in my younger years in the sun. I just don’t know how to put it into words. I’ll miss his professionalism, and my wife says so, too. He’s a good guy and became a friend. He will be missed.”
Bettye Grady is not only a patient, she is a neighbor.
“He’s just a wonderful doctor and friend,” she said. “My children were his patients, too.”
She last saw Shereff at an appointment two weeks ago.
“I hugged his neck, and I cried,” Grady said. “I just absolutely cried. It makes me sad. He and Susan have been just wonderful members of this community.”
Saying goodbye to his patients has been emotional for Richard and Susan Shereff.
“I’m going to miss all of my patients,” he said. “I do get a little choked up.”
Susan Shereff knows the emotions of this farewell, too.
“We’ll miss the patients, and our staff,” she said about Jan Taylor, Kim Bates, and Susan Atkinson.
Still, the Shereffs will tell you it’s time.
‘The Time Has Come’
Richard Shereff has spent these recent days in reflection as October 31 nears.
“At first, I felt empty,” he said. “But it’s clear the time has come to pass this along to someone else. I think I’m ready now.”
Richard and Susan Shereff like calling Fayetteville home.
“Susan intends to volunteer at Cape Fear Botanical Garden,” he said.
He plans to continue volunteering at The CARE Clinic for the uninsured.
“I’m proud of The CARE Clinic because I believe the measure of a community is how well it takes care of its own,” said Shereff, who has volunteered at the nonprofit since 1997. “Patients I have seen really need care. They are down and out and need our help.”
He looks forward to the success of the Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine.
“We don’t have a dermatology program yet,” Shereff said. “I would like to see them establish a dermatology residency program.”
Epilogue
Richard Shereff arrived in Fayetteville 50 years ago and saw a city with what he describes as “great potential,” but a city that hasn’t realized its promise.
“I don’t see it yet,” he said, “but it is still there.”
A city, he believes, is what you choose to make it.
“Fayetteville is friendly and welcoming,” Richard Shereff said. “It’s just a friendly place to live. We’ve been blessed to be so well accepted. It has been good to us.”
Richard and Susan Shereff have been good to Fayetteville. And something else. Richard and Susan Shereff have been good for Fayetteville.
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
