(Courtesy of the Hoffman family)
Ellen Braunstein
Gerald “Jerry” Hoffman, a Reisterstown dentist who practiced for 50 years and was a devoted member of Baltimore’s Jewish community, died on Aug. 25 at age 93.
Hoffman grew up in a modest household in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Benjamin Hoffman, worked for Smedley Co., a moving and storage company, and his mother, Ida, was a homemaker. His daughters, Ray Ellen Fisher and Wendy Cohen, said their grandparents’ values shaped him for life.
“They taught him to work hard and take care of people,” Fisher said. “He was brought up in a blue-collar environment, and he had strong determination. He always did what was right.”
From the start of his career, Hoffman saw himself as an old-fashioned dentist. “He treated each patient like family,” Wendy Cohen said. “He cared more about his treatment and his relationships than about seeing a lot of patients.” He avoided cosmetic trends that he believed could harm teeth and preferred preventive care, steady methods and personal connection. “He followed what he believed in,” Fisher said. “He didn’t care about keeping up with trends — he cared about what was safe and right for people.”
Hoffman attended the University of Connecticut and moved to Baltimore to enroll in the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, now the University of Maryland School of Dentistry.
Financial aid made dental school possible. After graduating in 1958, he served two years as a dentist in the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Hoffman eventually opened a private practice in the Chartley Park Shopping Center in Reisterstown. He retired in 2005. As a dentist, he visited local schools to teach children how to brush their teeth, took emergency calls from relatives who cracked fillings on hard candy and treated his staff with deep loyalty. “His staff was family to him,” Cohen said. “He made sure they were taken care of.”
He was an avid cyclist who rode from the family’s Randallstown–Pikesville neighborhood to his office whenever weather allowed. He installed a shower at work so he could clean up before seeing patients. He was a serious biker, having completed 18 “century” rides of 100 miles each.
Hoffman was also artistic. After his father died, he returned to painting, often creating portraits of rabbis and Jewish scenes. He later took up needlepoint and crewel (wool yarn) work, completing over 50 pieces. Many were personalized with family names, inside jokes or visual details that made them unmistakably his. He won prizes at the Maryland State Fair, and his artwork lined the walls of his office and home and, later, his apartment at Springwell Senior Living. “He loved to tell people the stories behind his creations,” Fisher said.
He also successfully traced his ancestral roots and volunteered to help others research their Jewish genealogy.
Hoffman busied himself with family projects. For each of his three grandsons, he refinished and painted old wooden rocking chairs, adding themes such as sports or Sesame Street and including the child’s name. Shortly before he died, he reminded his daughters to continue the tradition for what would have been his first great-granddaughter, born on Nov. 2. “He told me, ‘Get her a rocking chair with her name on it,’” Fisher said.
He brought similar devotion to the Jewish life he led after his father died. Hoffman began attending the daily minyan at Chizuk Amuno Congregation in Pikesville. “He went every morning,” Cohen said. “Even after the year of mourning, he kept going.” He celebrated an adult bar mitzvah at the synagogue. At services, he became an unofficial timekeeper, gently reminding the group to begin on schedule. Congregants still say, “Jerry says it’s time to start minyan,” before services.
He demonstrated an especially strong commitment to Jewish community in the 1970s and 1980s. Hoffman and his wife, Marcia, helped resettle Jewish refugees through HIAS and local agencies. They picked up families at the airport, brought them to the old Boxwood Lodge Motel, took them to what was then Shapiro’s kosher market and hosted meals as newcomers adjusted to Baltimore. “Whatever my mother was involved in, Dad became part of it,” Fisher said. “They were both givers.”
He met his wife, Marcia, in 1958 on a Valentine’s Day blind date at a dental fraternity dance at the Lord Baltimore Hotel. Their marriage lasted 62 years. Marcia, a retired social worker, developed Alzheimer’s and died from COVID-19 in 2020.
In 2022, Hoffman moved to Springwell Senior Living, where he found close companionship at Dining Room Table 18 — known as “Table Chai.” He was the lone man among a group of mostly Jewish women who welcomed him immediately. “They became his second family,” Fisher said. “When he wasn’t at meals, they worried and reached out to us.”
Hoffman stayed mentally sharp into his 90s, working crossword puzzles and cryptograms, writing humorous poems and following the Orioles and Ravens.
Late in life, his iPhone 8 became his steady link to the world. He texted his daughters and grandsons every day with emojis, checked scores, played word games and reached out to friends. “He used that phone constantly,” Fisher said. “Most people in their 90s don’t use a phone like that, but he really did.”
During hospital and rehab stays, the phone stayed at his side, plugged in with a long charging cord so it could always reach his bed. Even in his final days, he would pat the sheets and ask, “Where’s my phone? Is it nearby?”
For his daughter, the final act of turning off his phone — the device he relied on to stay close to everyone he loved — was especially hard. “That phone was his lifeline,” Fisher said. “He reached out to us every single day. That’s what mattered to him. He never stopped wanting to be a part of our lives.”
Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.
Dr. Hoffman was the best and kindest dentist I have ever had. I was fascinated by the needlework and art on his walls. I was heartened to see the children’s toy with wooden balls on a wire track in the continuing practice’s office on Dolfield after his retirement.