Page 13 - Delaware Medical Journal - July/August 2019
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COVER STORY
the European theater and was a true New Yorker. According to Petrelli, the only time his father left New York was to drive him to college at Notre Dame in Indiana. His father also held the family record of being the one and only Petrelli to hit a home run in Yankee Stadium during his early years playing club baseball. Petrelli shared his father’s love of the sport, playing Little League and Babe Ruth League baseball as a youth, but never matched his father’s Yankee Stadium accomplishment, leaving the bragging rights to the senior Petrelli.
A well-rounded education
Educated at Notre Dame and graduating with a degree in history, Petrelli still muses over “having to read the Thirty Years’ War, which was very painful.”
He received very good grades, despite
the fact that he says he had a tough time taking exams and needed to read things several times before they sunk in. He also swam on the Notre Dame swim team, competing in the 1,000-meter freestyle. Petrelli graduated from Tulane University Medical School, where he credits his well- rounded education as being a big factor in his acceptance.
After medical school, Petrelli headed
to San Francisco, where he completed followed by an impressive Surgical Oncology fellowship at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, Institute (NCI)-designated cancer center in the country. While in San Francisco, he met his future bride, Cathy. The couple married in California and then immediately drove across the country
to Buffalo, so Petrelli could start his week of his fellowship) was spent at the Ramada Inn in Niagara Falls, something his wife still likes to remind him of, Petrelli says.
Nicholas J. Petrelli, MD surfing with daughter Nicole, Montauk, NY
After a two-year return to San Francisco for another fellowship, and a one-year fellowship in Milan, Italy, Petrelli was offered a full-time academic position, complete with a lab, back in Buffalo at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. He assured his wife, a California native, they would only stay in New York for a few years. That promise stretched to 22 years!
The hours were long, sometimes 110- 120-hour work weeks, but Petrelli
says it never seemed like it. His major responsibilities included taking care
of cancer patients in the clinic and operating room, teaching residents and fellows, as well as lab research. He was also a professor of surgery at the State University of New York at Buffalo and was the Fellowship Director for the Society of Surgical Oncology. “They were tremendous years and if I had it
to do over again, I would do it the same way,” says Petrelli. But Petrelli had made a promise to his wife — that he wouldn’t his career in Buffalo.
Heading south to Delaware
Petrelli decided he needed a new challenge and he needed to keep up his end of the bargain to Cathy. He was now the Chief of Surgical Oncology, his lab was running smoothly, he had a major grant to help with the lab’s work, and the time was right to leave Buffalo. A friend at the NCI contacted him
to say there was a place in Delaware that might have an opening he would be interested in. After more than two decades, the Petrelli family, complete with daughters Nicole and Gabriella, headed to the First State to begin the next chapter of their lives.
The decision to head south was based on two factors. According to Petrelli, “Delaware was number one for cancer mortality, and the community and
state government really wanted to do something about that. Seventeen years later, Delaware is now ranked 18th for cancer mortality and that honeymoon period of community support has lasted 17 years!”
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