Charles Gellman, 88, Hospital Executive and Boxer
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Charles Gellman, who died Friday at 88, was the executive director of several New York City hospitals and president of the Greater New York Hospital Association.
He attributed his success as an administrator to his brief boxing career in the 1930s, when he won 60 out of 65 matches. His fistic skills funded an engineering degree and an MBA, both from Columbia.
In later years, Gellman used his position at Jewish Memorial Hospital and others to provide free health care for boxers, from “the lowest prelim boy” to such greats as Jack Dempsey, Mickey Walker, Rocky Graziano, and Roberto Duran.
Gellman grew up in North Bergen, N.J., where his father was a carpenter. Lacking money for college during the depths of the Depression, he took the advice of his friend Jimmy Braddock, and started boxing to pay the bills. Gellman was trained by Joe Jeanette at his North Bergen gym. Jeanette was a great black fighter who had his heyday around the turn of the century. He occasionally sparred with Braddock but, as a middleweight, never had the prospect of professionally fighting the future heavyweight champ.
To avoid distressing his mother, he fought under the name Jack Halper. “I got $1,200 for a big bout,” Gellman said in 1997. “That was a million dollars back then.” He quit boxing in 1937, and enrolled at Columbia.
After serving as a munitions specialist stateside with the Army during World War II, Gellman went to work at the New York supply mission for the new state of Israel. The job included travel to Israel, where Gellman became interested in hospital administration. In 1952, he took his first job at a hospital, and he went on to a career as executive director of the Hospital for Special Surgery, Grand Central Hospital, Beth David, and Jewish Memorial Hospital.
In 1971, Gellman was named president of Greater New York Hospital Association; he later became the chairman of the organization’s board of governors. Although he had no medical degree, his friends and acquaintances often called him “Doc,” perhaps because he helped so many get medical care.
In 1974, while he was at Jewish Memorial, Gellman heard that police had found Mickey Walker lying in a gutter, incoherent. Walker was known as the Toy Bulldog during a career that included welterweight and middleweight world championships. At 72, he was broke, and afflicted with anemia, arteriosclerosis, and Parkinson’s. Gellman got Walker a private room, a team of doctors, and eventually a place at a nursing home. The story made national news.
When a reporter from the Washington Post told him that people in boxing considered him “a Jewish saint,” Gellman replied, “Actually, I am a Christian Scientist.”
Gellman was chairman of the board of Ring 8, a benevolent organization that helps elderly fighters. He was also a member of the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame, and was awarded the first Harry Markson Humanitarian Award by the Boxing Writers Association of America.
Gellman got out of boxing once he had his grubstake, but boxing never got out of him. “I used to say to him, ‘You accomplished so much. Why is it all you talk about is boxing?'” his wife, Ruth Westrich, said. “Then we figured it out. It was because boxing made the career possible.”
Charles Gellman
Born December 18, 1916, in North Bergen, N.J.; died November 25 at Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre, N.Y., of congestive heart failure; he is survived by his wife, Ruth; daughters Margot Gellman and Tessa Granat, and three grandchildren.