Dr. Joel Sherlock, helped start kidney transplant program at SBU Hospital, dies at 87

The kidney transplant program Dr. Joel Sherlock helped to start at Stony Brook University Hospital allowed people to live a life free of dialysis, a colleague said.

"Joel was a nephrologist, a medical kidney doctor, and he helped us do two things," said Dr. Wayne Waltzer, a urologist and the hospital's director of renal transplant. "One, to set up our own organ procurement organization on Long Island. And two, he started referring ... his dialysis patients to Stony Brook to transplantation.

"He helped start a program on Long Island that has now served literally thousands of people," he said.

Sherlock, of Northport, died on Sept. 14 at age 87.

He was born on Dec. 21, 1937, in Jersey City. His wife, Kathleen, and daughter, Maureen Molin, described him as "inquisitive" and "studious."

Sherlock was accepted into Regis High School, an all-boys Catholic high school in Manhattan that provides a tuition-free Jesuit education. He then attended St. Peter’s College — now St. Peter’s University — from 1955 to 1959 and majored in biology and chemistry.

He met his first wife, Roberta, in 1960 at the Catholic Youth Organization. They had four children between 1962 and 1966.

Molin described her father as strict, "but caring and silly at times," and "the inventor of all the bad dad jokes."

One of his favorites: "If there was a bug in your drink, he’d say, ‘Oh, it won’t drink much,’ ” Molin said.

In 1963, he graduated from Cornell Medical School and became a doctor of nephrology. He then served as a doctor in the Navy from 1964 to 1967. Sherlock did not talk much about his time in the Navy, "except for delivering babies of the officers," Kathleen Sherlock said.

"And helping put back together the guys who were sent back from Vietnam who needed medical care," Molin added.

Medical career

Joel Sherlock had a storied medical career; after the Navy, he practiced at Georgetown University Hospital from 1967 to 1971. The family then moved to Port Washington, and he began working at the Nassau County Medical Center in East Meadow.

From the mid-1970s to 2002, he was the chief of renal services and the medical director of the dialysis unit at Huntington Hospital. From 1980 to 1990, he was the director of Stony Brook University Hospital’s organ recovery program, and from 1980 to 2002, he was on the medical staff for transplant services.

"He was a person who was unusually kind and caring to his patients," Waltzer said.

"He really was a physician who focused and cared very much about the well-being of his patients," he added.

Sherlock was also instrumental in establishing the organ donor mark on state licenses, something Molin knew about only because of a passing comment he made. "He was a humble guy. He didn’t talk about these things," she said.

An accomplished guitar player

Sherlock loved music and was an accomplished guitar player, Molin said. One of his favorite guitar players from whom he drew inspiration was Django Reinhardt, the Belgian jazz guitarist and composer. After retiring from medicine and the death of his wife, Roberta, in 2009, Sherlock earned a degree in music theory from Stony Brook University.

Sherlock also had "a beautiful bass voice," said Kathleen Sherlock, and was a part of local choir groups.

In 2014, Sherlock met Kathleen at a beach picnic party, when he overheard her talking about the bereavement group she became part of after losing her husband.

He asked if he could join the group, so Kathleen took him to one of the meetings "and we started talking and after that it was a done deal," she said. They were married in 2019.

From 2019 to 2022, Sherlock volunteered as a mentor at the Northport VA Medical Center, where he worked with new renal fellows. "It was important [to him] to train the future," Molin said.

In addition to his wife, Kathleen, and daughter Maureen, he is survived by his daughter, Kathy Gooze; son, Michael Sherlock; grandchildren, Lindsay Molin, Emily Molin, Zachary Molin, Jake Wisnicki and Julia Royer; and a great-grandchild.

Sherlock was buried in Northport Rural Cemetery.