Jerry was native of Atlanta, Georgia.  He  graduated as a pharmacist and then received a degree in chemistry from the University of Georgia. Jerry graduated as Alpha Omega Alpha from the Medical College of Georgia in 1960. He completed his internship in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and followed that experience by serving as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force. After completing his military service, Jerry began his residency in medicine and gastroenterology at the VA Hospital in the Bronx and Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, New York. He was mentored by Henry Colcher and Charles Flood, both past presidents of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) and Rudolf Schindler Award recipients.

After residency, Jerry entered private practice in Atlanta, Georgia.  Jerry left private practice in 1973 and was accepted by Professor Sheila Sherlock as a research fellow in gastroenterology and hepatology at the Royal Free Hospital, University of London. He became involved in ERCP and introduced colonoscopy to that institution. In 1975, Jerry accepted an appointment at the New York Medical College as training director of the fellowship program. Jerry honed his endoscopic and ERCP skills and became one of a few gastroenterologists in the United States performing ERCPs.  Jerry garnered his experience with sphincterotomies when he worked with Laszlo Safrany in Muenster, Germany. Jerry accepted fellows from other programs for advanced training; then, in 1989, he began one of the first advanced fellowship programs in therapeutic endoscopy in North America. 

His practice, based at Doctor's Hospital/Beth Israel North was a regional referral center for ERCP.  He ran the first live endoscopy courses in New York in ERCP there, and trained many fellows and visiting gastroenterologists in the intricacies of the procedure.  He was well known as a traveling endoscopist, with temporary privileges at 40 hospitals in the tri-state area.  He would come as needed to assist with ERCP when no other expert options were available, traveling with duodenoscope and accessories to hospitals that had neither.  His private practice in 2010 contained 6 interventional endoscopists - unequaled in the United States. 

Jerry was a clinical professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He published 123 peer-reviewed articles, 130 abstracts, 14 requested peer-reviewed articles, and 27 chapters in textbooks. In 1991, he published a single-author textbook on ERCP, which remains a standard today. Jerry participated in symposia and live demonstrations throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, China, Japan, and India. He taught and trained gastroenterologists in Vietnam.  That program was recognized by the ASGE’s Ambassadors program and is continued today by his partner, Franklin Kasmin. Jerry is an ASGE Master Endoscopist. He was on the editorial boards of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the American Journal of Gastroenterology, and others.

In 2014, Jerry received the prestigious Rudolf Schindler Award, the highest honor bestowed by the ASGE. Jerry was a Master of the American College of Gastroenterology, a Fellow and past board member of the ASGE Foundation, and a Fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association. He was a Fellow and Past President of the New York Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine at the New York Academy of Medicine, a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences at the New York Academy of Science, and a member of other international organizations. Jerry was recognized, with 14 other endoscopists (5 from the United States and 10 from abroad), in a 2015 publication of the Cook Channel’s “40 Years of Interventional ERCP, Stories from the Pioneers.” 

Jerry and his wife of 62 years, Beverly, resided in Manhattan. They have a daughter, Dori; a son, Brian; and 4 grandchildren with strong family ties to Atlanta.  He was a truly extraordinary physician, teacher, friend and colleague to so many of us.  He will be deeply missed.