The values he learned from his father lifted Richard Chernecky into a career of impact and a life of consequence. Now he’s giving back.

Richard Chernecky came to Emory knowing what he wanted.

Soon after arriving on campus, he walked into the admissions office and told Charlie Watson, Emory’s director of admissions at the time, exactly what he planned to do: finish college in three years and go straight to medical school.

Watson, Chernecky recalls, took a few puffs on his pipe and replied, “Well, you’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Chernecky studied year-round, including summers. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa after three years and started at Emory School of Medicine just two weeks after receiving his undergraduate degree. The pace was intense; his goal ambitious. But hard work never deterred him. Instead, it challenged him. Always has.

Now, after a long career in medicine, Chernecky is giving back by including Emory in his estate planning. Through a provision in his revocable living trust, he has arranged a future gift to Emory that will establish the Edward S. Chernecky Scholarship Fund. A revocable living trust allows donors to plan a meaningful future commitment while retaining flexibility during their lifetime. For Chernecky, the arrangement is both practical and deeply personal — a way to honor his father, support future physicians, and extend the values that have guided his own life and career. 

“My father was my hero,” he says. “He gave me all the tools. He taught me to be focused and successful, to set and achieve goals.”

Those lessons carried Chernecky through Emory, a career in medicine, and the rewarding life he has built along the way.

He grew up outside New Haven, Connecticut, in a family that valued discipline and hard work. A promising student from a young age, he was admitted to several Southern universities, including Duke, Vanderbilt, and Emory. But Emory stood out — for its idyllic campus and academic rigor, but also because it offered the financial support that made his education possible. Chernecky saw a future there.

He knew he wanted to be a doctor. Emory helped make it happen, and his father showed him how to stay the course.

Edward Chernecky was a World War II veteran who served in the 10th Mountain Division in the Aleutian Islands and in Italy. He came home carrying the effects of the war and, like many men of his generation, rarely spoke about what he had lived through. He had hoped to become a tailor through the GI Bill, but because of the anxiety he brought back from deployment, he couldn’t keep his hands steady enough to work with needle and thread. Instead, he took a job at a rubber company in Connecticut, where he stayed for the rest of his career.

He was not a man who talked much about hardship, his son says. He just overcame it. He kept going. In doing so, he showed Chernecky what resolve looks like when applied every day, in the ordinary — and the extraordinary — moments.

Those qualities carried Chernecky through Emory College and medical school, then through an internal medicine residency at Rutgers and back to Emory for a fellowship in gastroenterology.

In 1982, he opened a practice in Lawrenceville and became the first full-time gastroenterologist based in Gwinnett County. He ran a solo practice there for 28 years. Later, he joined a larger practice on the Gulf Coast, then spent seven years as a locums physician, taking assignments in 13 states around the country. Over the course of his career, he performed thousands of endoscopic procedures.

He built a long and successful life in medicine. But over time, his view of the profession began to change.

As he moved from one hospital to another later in his career, Chernecky saw a field under strain. Physicians were leaving private practice or no longer seeing their hospitalized patients because of new financial considerations and limitations. He saw hospitals struggling to fill physician gaps. Younger doctors were entering a system that felt less stable and less predictable than the one he had known. The independent path that once seemed possible for many physicians had become much harder to sustain.

One change stood out in particular: the rising cost of becoming a doctor. Chernecky graduated from medical school with $8,800 in loans. Today, most graduating medical students — about 70 percent — leave with education debt around $215,000. His planned gift is one way to help future Emory physicians begin with less financial pressure and more room to choose the path that suits them best.

He speaks of today’s students with real affection, calling them his grandchildren. He knows how hard they have worked to get here. He knows what the profession will ask of them. And he knows, from experience, what early support can make possible — not only in the education and careers young physicians build, but in the lives they shape and the care they give.

Sandra Wong, MD, dean of Emory School of Medicine, says Chernecky’s story reflects values Emory hopes to instill in every future physician: discipline, compassion, and purpose.

“Richard Chernecky’s story is a powerful reminder that the making of a physician begins long before medical school,” she says. “The values that shaped his life are the same qualities we nurture in our students at Emory. Through this generous gift, Richard is helping future physicians receive an outstanding education and begin their careers with greater freedom to follow their calling.”

For Chernecky, the scholarship fund is not just a way to give back to the institution that helped launch his career or an investment in the future of medicine. It’s personal. “This is about my father,” he says. The gift honors the man who taught him how to live. 

For more information on how to include Emory in your estate plans, visit giftplanning.emory.edu or contact one of our Gift Planning Officers at giftplanning@emory.edu or 404-727-8875.