In his footsteps, all together
At Advocare Berlin Medical Associates, five Dr. Hassmans are in the house. There's Dr. Joseph Hassman, the patriarch; his sons, Howard, David, and Michael; and his daughter, Elissa.
At Advocare Berlin Medical Associates, five Dr. Hassmans are in the house.
There's Dr. Joseph Hassman, the patriarch; his sons, Howard, David, and Michael; and his daughter, Elissa.
Lillian, Joe's wife of 60 years, sometimes offers counseling sessions there as well.
And Jared and Mitchell Hassman, two of their 11 grandkids, work in the front office of the Crosskeys Road complex.
"Talk about a family practice," Joe, 80, says. "How often do you have all four of your kids follow in your footsteps, and under one roof? This is a dream come true."
I'm chatting with the congenial doc, whom I've known for almost 40 years - I met him covering Cherry Hill politics in the 1970s - at his office.
I love doing this sort of column, but I also must ask Joe about the euthanizing of his mother-in-law, which propelled him into controversy in 1986, and led to a sentence of probation and community service.
"She was suffering," he says. "But if I had it to do over, I probably wouldn't have done it."
Joe established his practice in Berlin Township in 1966; during recent interviews, he and his children talked about how much medicine has changed during the last half-century.
"When I was 7 or 8, he would take me with him on house calls," says Elissa, 55, an ophthalmologist and mother of three who lives in Abington.
"We'd go down these country roads and visit a great-grandmother who couldn't come to the office," she recalls. "Sometimes he'd get paid with a bushel of zucchinis."
David, 50, who like his two brothers is a family practitioner, remembers the house calls, too.
"My father built relationships with his patients," the Cherry Hill father of three says. "We all enjoyed watching my father practice medicine. But we never envisioned going to work for him."
Joe grew up in North Philadelphia. His father drove a cab, "and we didn't know we were poor," he recalls.
After working as a pharmacist for a couple of years, he was accepted at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, where all four of his children later would earn their medical degrees as well.
Joe went into a family practice in partnership with another physician - such arrangements were rare at the time, he says - so he could spend more time with his own family.
"I was always home for dinner," he adds proudly.
Nevertheless, the siblings remember their dad as working long hours, sometimes seven days a week.
No wonder some hesitated about medicine as a career. Elissa originally planned to be a veterinarian.
But Michael and his siblings were impressed by the respect the community held for his father. Who also gave good advice.
"He told me, 'If you become a doctor, you'll never starve, and you put out your shingle anywhere in the world,' " says Michael, 47, who has two children and lives in Mount Laurel.
He and David took over the business about 10 years ago; Elissa and Howard are more recent arrivals.
"I came out of retirement," says Howard, 59, a Voorhees father of three, including Mitchell and Jared, who are working at Berlin Medical.
His father established a clinical studies program as part of the practice; Howard conducts research on potential drugs for Alzheimer's and other neurological or mental disorders.
Joe also has long been active in the community. He served on the Cherry Hill council for 21/2 terms, beginning in the 1970s. (He and Lillian still reside in the township.) He also has played the role of a "Jewish Santa" at the Ronald McDonald House in Camden for the last 15 Christmases.
In 1986, he made an agonizing decision to euthanize his mother-in-law, who was suffering from Alzheimer's. He acknowledged injecting Demerol into her feeding tube while she was a nursing home patient.
"It was an act of compassion," Joe says, his voice breaking.
"She was going to spend the rest of her life with a feeding tube, not knowing who we were. It makes me emotional just to talk about it."
Although he has stepped back a bit from day-to-day operations, Joe wants it known that he has not retired.
"Retirement is not in my vocabulary," he says.
And his children say the family has found a way to be together professionally, as well as personally.
"It's like a marriage. You have to be committed to making it work," Howard says. "But when you're doing what you love to do, it's not work.
"We want to give the next generation of our family the same opportunity our father has given us."
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