By Dr. Ken Herman

March 4, 2020 will be my 93rd birthday and I still see myself as an active and vital person. I exercise at the local gym seven days a week and hope to keep this up. In 2007, after 50 years of practice as a Clinician, launching and directing The Psychological Service Center in Teaneck, New Jersey, I retired. I wanted to have the time to promote my self-help book, “Secrets from the Sofa: A Psychologist Guide to Achieving Personal Peace.”

Throughout my very satisfying professional life, along with a busy clinical practice, I taught at three universities, supervise psychologists, published numerous articles, conducted research, lectured extensively, appeared on television and radio, and served on various boards. But I knew that it was becoming the time to move on. Simultaneously, I was actively looking for an all consuming volunteer project of monumental dimensions. I had a need to help many neglected people who are in dire need of urgent as well as psychological care.

Eventually, the volunteer project that I choose to support was the Bergen Volunteer Medical Initiative (BVMI,) a free primary care medical facility for the uninsured, and working poor in Hackensack, New Jersey. It took five years for the facility to become operative. We are currently in our 11th year. I served on the original Board of Trustees and presently on the Advisory Board. The Center is committed to improving the overall health of the community through a culture of caring, respecting the dignity and individuality of the patients and staff.

My involvement with BVMI has made my retirement years so special. Fundraising has been and continues to be my ongoing task. Particularly satisfying to me is the enormous number of patients who have been receiving life-saving care, and whose numbers keep growing. I am so proud to be associated with all of the wonderful professional and volunteer staff of the BVMI.

So, colleagues, you can keep the old man out by discovering your own BVMI, an important project that you just can’t wait to get to tomorrow morning. It will be a place where you can use most of your skills, and where your passion will be ignited and will be indispensable for your new venture. It’s probably right around the corner.

Kenneth Herman, ED.D. ABPP, Clinical.
DrHerman@optonline.net