Valerie Rosenhoch, 69, health care executive and passionate advocate for disabled

Sept. 11--Feb. 14, 1949 -- Sept. 10, 2018

Professionally and personally, Valerie Rosenhoch was focused on one thing: helping others live healthy lives.

As a local health care executive, she led programs that enabled low-income people to get health care and coverage. She dedicated her volunteer time to similar goals.

Her personal efforts included years of work, with other parents, to get state approval for an innovative type of group living for seven men with Down syndrome, including her son David.

"She's had several common themes in her life: passion, excellence and real success," said Richard Tobe, her friend of 51 years, who said he and his wife and the Rosenhochs "had been family to each other."

Ms. Rosenhoch, 69, died Sept. 10, 2018, in Hospice Buffalo's Mary and Ralph C. Wilson Jr. inpatient unit on the Mitchell Campus in Cheektowaga. She had been fighting pancreatic cancer for more than a year.

She was born in Washington, D.C. "Valerie liked to say she was born in the 'united,' not the 'states' part of the U.S.," said her husband of 47 years, Howard Rosenhoch.

Ms. Rosenhoch was the only child of Alan and Beulah Sagar. Her father, a haberdasher, died when she was 10. She was later the stepdaughter of James Griffith and stepsister of Michael Griffith.

She attended grade schools in several places, finishing in White Plains. She graduated from Great Neck South Junior and Senior high schools on Long Island, then started at the University at Buffalo.

On Sept. 5, 1967, a few days before classes started, she met Howard Rosenhoch "on a lemonade break from band camp, which we attended as freshmen members of the UB Marching Band," said her husband, who played saxophone. She was a baton twirler.

Ms. Rosenhoch graduated from UB in 1971 with a degree in sociology. She earned a master's degree in urban planning in 1973 from Hunter College of the City University of New York.

The Rosenhochs married on June 13, 1971, in Hempstead, N.Y.

In 1975, Bob Ludwig hired Ms. Rosenhoch to work for Comprehensive Health Planning of Western New York. Ludwig remembered that after that agency's funding ended, he and Ms. Rosenhoch spoke to groups across the eight counties of Western New York to explain why their company should continue the work. The effort succeeded, leading to the creation of Health Systems Agency of Western New York, where she worked from 1976 to 1983.

"She was such an easy mixer," Ludwig said. "She could get into a group of people, just start talking and draw them out, so they got them to know her, too. She was a marvelously easy person to talk to."

After he left in 1980 for Health Care Plan, the area's first HMO, he hired her to work for him there. She was director of government affairs for Health Care Plan in 1999, when the company's name was changed to Univera Healthcare.

In 2004, Ms. Rosenhoch was named vice president for legislative and regulatory policy at the Lifetime Healthcare Companies, of which Univera is a part. She retired in February 2016.

"Her work passion was trying to find ways that low-income people could get health care, working through the HMOs and the insurance companies," said Tobe.

Around 2008, the Rosenhochs and the parents of six other young men with Down syndrome, who were friends, began designing an innovative group residence. Aspire of Western New York purchased a home in Amherst and the arrangement was approved by the state Office for People with Developmental Disabilities. The men moved into the home in June 2013.

The home is "a statewide model," said Tobe. "It broke new ground with the state."

In an interview with Buffalo News reporter Gene Warner in 2016, Ms. Rosenhoch said, "People with developmental disabilities need opportunities to reach their own potential, but in very different ways. One size doesn't fit all, but this house works for our guys."

The Rosenhochs and their son, along with other parents and residents of the house, attended conferences and lobbied on issues, such as increasing reimbursement for the aides who worked in direct care, said Tobe.

In 2017, the Rosenhoch family was honored at the Community Leader Awards ceremony by the National Federation of Just Communities for Western New York.

She served on the board of Yad B'Yad, "Hand in Hand," a program of activities designed to help people with disabilities participate in Jewish life, as well as the boards of the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo and the Kadimah Academy of Buffalo.

With her husband, she served as co-chair of Temple Beth Zion's Kol Nidre Campaign. She served on the synagogue's Ritual Committee and the coordinating committee for the interfaith Mitzvah Day. For years, the Rosenhochs have been delegates at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Rosenhoch was secretary of the Near East and West Side Task Force, a collaborative to promote well-being and self-sufficiency in those neighborhoods. Tobe said that a few months ago she organized all the founding documents of the task force, then "delivered them at a board meeting and resigned because of her health."

Ms. Rosenhoch was instrumental in creating the Developmental Disabilities Alliance of Western New York Family Committee, a lobbying and advocacy group of families of those with intellectual disabilities. She was on the Core Team and Government Affairs Committee.

"All over Buffalo, there are charitable works that she and Howard were involved in," said Tobe.

Besides her son David, she is survived by her older son, Alan Rosenhoch. He and Gabrielle Balderman had their first child, Emilia Tziporah Rosenhoch, on Sept. 3, and Ms. Rosenhoch was able to hold her first grandchild.

Her funeral will be held at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 12, in Temple Beth Zion, 805 Delaware Ave.

Memorials in Ms. Rosenhoch's memory may be made to Kadimah Academy of Buffalo, Aspire of WNY to support the home at 163 High Park Blvd., or any charity.

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