For two WVSOM Class of 1992 alumni, giving back to the school that led them to build a successful orthopedic practice means commemorating the late wife of an educator who inspired them.
WVSOM alumni Joseph Cincinnati, D.O., and Troy Foster, D.O., of the Martinsburg, W.Va.-based Valley Health Center for Orthopedic Excellence, established a $200,000 endowment through the WVSOM Foundation. The endowment will fund the Patricia Louise McClung Nemitz Memorial Scholarship, named in honor of the late wife of WVSOM President James W. Nemitz, Ph.D. Patricia, known by most as “Patty,” passed away in 2009 of complications from multiple sclerosis.
The scholarship will be awarded annually to a WVSOM student in good academic standing who has demonstrated strong character and dedication to their community. Preference will be given to students who earned an undergraduate degree from Cincinnati’s alma mater, Concord University, or Foster’s alma mater, West Virginia University. Preference also will be given to students from Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties in West Virginia.
The physicians said the endowment’s goal is to help decrease the financial burden of future medical students and to retain residents of West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle to serve as local physicians.
“The price of medical school is much higher than when we were students, and we know that today’s young doctors are accruing a lot of debt,” Cincinnati said. “We want to help people from the Eastern Panhandle in the hope that they will come back to the area and work here.”
Nemitz was a relatively new WVSOM professor specializing in neuroanatomy in 1988 when Cincinnati and Foster arrived at the school as first-year students. The two aspiring physicians — Cincinnati, a native of Oak Hill, W.Va., and Foster, from just outside Pittsburgh, Pa. — became friends, and both were heavily influenced by Nemitz’s teaching.
“He didn’t just tell you, he showed you,” Foster said. “In anatomy lab, he would come and sit down beside you and do a dissection. He would get the textbook and show you the ‘normal’ and then show you the pathology in a cadaver. He was always available to help, no matter when you needed him.”
Cincinnati said he personally benefited from the way Nemitz taught a notoriously difficult topic.
“Neuroanatomy is one of the hardest subjects in medical school. It was still hard, but Dr. Nemitz explained it in ways we could understand it. He didn’t talk down to you,” Cincinnati said.
In the 1980s it was common for professors and students to socialize outside the classroom, and Nemitz was among the members of the WVSOM community Cincinnati and Foster befriended, spending time together at school functions such as pig roasts and athletic activities such as flag football and basketball games. It was through these events that the pair met Patty, who also welcomed Cincinnati into the Nemitz home for dinner during his time in medical school.
Nemitz had left a teaching position at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., to return to his wife’s hometown of Lewisburg and take a job at WVSOM following Patty’s multiple sclerosis diagnosis so that she could be close to her family.
“Patty had a lot of energy, and she was always smiling,” Foster said. “Dr. Nemitz was a gloating husband. He was always commenting on what a wonderful person she was. He still talks about her today.”
When Cincinnati and Foster approached the WVSOM Foundation about making a gift, they were determined to name the endowment after Nemitz’s late wife.
“I told Dr. Nemitz, ‘If it wasn’t for her, you wouldn’t have been in Lewisburg. You would never have taught us, and you wouldn’t have been there to make us what we are today. Maybe the person who’d have been teaching instead wouldn’t have been good enough to teach me, and I may not have made it through school.’ So I credit Patty for that,” Cincinnati explained.
Foster said he appreciates that WVSOM admitted him as a student.
“WVSOM takes chances on students,” he said. “When I was applying, my grades were fine, but I didn’t have organic chemistry, and I would have had to wait a year. It was just a timing thing. WVSOM went out of their way to accept me once I met the school’s criteria. And once I got in, I never had a problem academically.”
After graduating from WVSOM, Cincinnati and Foster completed residencies at Doctors Hospital in Massillon, Ohio, then worked at City Hospital (now known as Berkeley Medical Center) in Martinsburg before creating the Center for Orthopedic Excellence. The two orthopedic surgeons built a strong practice by recruiting top-quality physicians and by making themselves known in their community. When local sporting events or 5Ks took place, the practice sponsored them. When a hospice facility was constructed nearby, Cincinnati and Foster made substantial donations. And when Berkeley County’s high schools hosted Friday night football games, center employees were on the sidelines — a tradition that continues to this day.
“We’re community-minded. We’ve been here for a long time,” Foster said. “People come to us because they know our names.”
The duo also owns Tri-State Surgical Center, which performs orthopedic surgery, foot and ankle surgery, ophthalmologic surgery, general surgery, endoscopic procedures and pain management procedures and which at one time was the state’s only privately owned multispecialty surgery center.
In early 2022, Cincinnati and Foster sold the Center for Orthopedic Excellence to Valley Health System, which also now owns a share of the surgery center. Cincinnati and Foster plan to continue to practice at both facilities. The sale of the thriving business they built together is part of what allowed the physicians to create an endowment at WVSOM, though the idea had been in the works for several years.
Today, the Center for Orthopedic Excellence has four D.O.s as providers, and plans to add a fifth — also a WVSOM graduate — in 2023.
Nemitz said he is thankful for a monetary gift that will assist medical students for many years to come.
“I’m filled with gratitude and humility for Drs. Cincinnati and Foster’s gift to WVSOM in memory of my dear wife, Patty. I’m so proud of what they have accomplished in their careers, the care they provide their patients and for giving back to WVSOM students,” he said.
Foster said the endowment is ultimately a way of giving back to the school that helped the pair succeed, and to a state that is in great need of physicians to ensure the future health of its residents.
“The hope is that we can support students who may not otherwise have the financial means to attend medical school, to help give them a start,” he said. “We want to play our part in creating a strong medical workforce in West Virginia.”