Dennis Goldsmith didn’t have a backup plan when he decided to become a teacher in the late 1960s. He didn’t need one. Teaching jobs were plentiful and Goldsmith had secured a job in the Spencerport School District where his wife had grown up. A graduate of The College at Brockport and University of Rochester, he was on track to earn his PhD.
Goldsmith taught social studies at Ada M. Cosgrove Junior High School for six years before moving to E.J. Wilson High School, where he taught for another six years while coaching basketball. “I loved what I did,” he said. “But I thought that I had more to offer and that it couldn’t be offered in the classroom or on the basketball court.”
As a coach, Goldsmith frequently crossed paths with Dr. Knox Brittain, a well known physician in the Spencerport community who also taught first aid. “He would often tell me that he heard I was an excellent teacher, but that I really belonged in medicine,” remembered Goldsmith. “He saw me differently than I saw myself.”
That planted the seed.
In 1971 and 1975, Spencerport teachers went on strike, which Goldsmith said helped fuel his thoughts about leaving the profession.
At the time, the physician’s assistant program was fairly new and there were few PAs in the Rochester area, however Penn State University’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Hahnemann University in Philadelphia offered the program. Goldsmith applied to both and was accepted at both universities. “I didn’t expect that and asked myself, ‘now what do I do?’”
Carol Goldsmith told her husband that of course they were going to Pennsylvania and chose Hershey because of its rural-suburban surroundings and the fact that, at Hershey Medical Center, medical students did not have to move around to different hospitals to do their rotations – an important factor for the young family. They sold their home in Spencerport, packed up their children, Nancy, age six, and Aaron, age three, and Dennis began the two-year program. “I never regretted the decision,” he said.
In his second year, Goldsmith was working in the Harrisburg Hospital Emergency Department when the calls started coming in. “My colleagues in Spencerport asked if I was ready to go back to teaching now that I got this out of my system,” he said. But Goldsmith was just beginning his new career. A call from a surgeon at what was then Genesee Hospital brought the family back to the Rochester area. They returned to Spencerport and a few months later, Goldsmith began splitting his time between the Genesee Hospital Emergency Department and Hilton Health Care. The practice hired him after the untimely death of Dr. Geoffrey Stead, who founded Hilton Health Care with Dr. Leon Zoghlin in 1979.
In 1984, Goldsmith decided to practice full time in Hilton. “When I first came, there were two doctors seeing about 2,000 patients. Now there are seven people seeing more than 12,000 patients,” he said.
Over the years, Goldsmith has treated thousands of people dealing with everything but obstetrics. “These wonderful people from all walks of life have taught me so much that I never would have learned – all because I was able to engage with them one-on-one,” he said.
Goldsmith’s last day at Hilton Health Care was December 31. “They treated me like royalty here,” he said. In his retirement, Goldsmith plans to spend his time volunteering with the homeless, spending time with his grandchildren, golfing, traveling, biking, studying the Bible and expanding his Lionel train collection.
