From basketball to the boardroom: Jerry Ehrlich’s journey to changing lives

By Kathleen Lees, Special to the Jewish Light

Published July 10, 2024

When Jerry Ehrlich looks back on his career, from radio announcer to CEO of a nonprofit, his invention of the “Hershey Bar Shot” stands at the forefront of his mind.

Paraquad CEO Jerry Ehrlich (center) with clients of the St. Louis nonprofit.

“When the time comes and my life is over, and my tombstone reads, ‘Jerry Ehrlich, founder of the Hershey Bar Shot,’ then maybe I would have lived a pretty darn good life,” he said.

His invention originated in the 1980s while he was working as a volunteer basketball coach at the St. Louis Jewish Community Center. He would stand with his back toward the opposite end of the court and hurl a basketball over his head. If he made the basket, everyone there would get a Hersey’s chocolate bar.

“Odds are, it just wasn’t gonna happen,” said Ehrlich, 66.

But he remembers one day when it did.

“I made the shot with over 200 people in the gymnasium,” Ehrlich said. “A week later, I brought one Hershey’s chocolate bar for every person there.”

Working at the J was just the beginning of an extensive and creative career helping others. Now the CEO of St. Louis nonprofit Paraquad, a position he’s held since 2021, Ehrlich’s focus is changing the lives of people with disabilities.

Helping others

Ehrlich studied at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., to explore broadcasting. For a time, he worked as a radio announcer at the school’s station and for the Chicago Bears. Not long into the job, however, he discovered that broadcasting wasn’t for him.

He returned to his home of St. Louis in the mid-1980s and started training young people as a volunteer basketball coach at the J. Soon he was offered a job rebuilding the youth sports program there.

“I love kids and sports,” Ehrlich said. “I love challenges. I love rebuilding. So I took it.”

Ehrlich worked at the J for more than 10 years and began working with children with disabilities in the organization. Throughout this time and beyond, he also started volunteering at the Senior Olympics as a track and field announcer.

After working for numerous nonprofits in the St. Louis area, Ehrlich became the executive director of the LifeBridge Partnership, an organization for children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, which needed to be rebuilt.

“I like challenges, and I had success rebuilding, but the first thing that came to mind was working with individuals, kids and adults, with special needs,” he said.

Ehrlich worked at the LifeBridge Partnership for nearly 10 years before becoming CEO at the Cornerstone Center for Early Learning, an organization that helps families with child care and preschool education. In 2021, he joined Paraquad.

As its CEO, he focuses some days on meetings and administrative duties while others involve one-on-one meetings with families and clients.

“There’s no typical day, but my standard line is that even when my door is closed, my door is open,” Ehrlich said. “I want people to know that I’m here for them now.”

Creating change

On May 20, four officials from President Joe Biden’s administration visited Paraquad to see the organization’s work and learn what the government can improve to more fully support people with disabilities. Among them was Alison Barkoff, a Jewish woman who leads the U.S. Administration for Community Living.

“When she came to Paraquad, we were very honored,” Ehrlich said.

Like Ehrlich, Barkoff feels a calling to help those with disabilities. Her younger brother Evan Nodvin was born with intellectual disabilities in the late 1970s, a time when the disability movement was just beginning.

Alison Barkoff, 49, recalls how a doctor told her family that they shouldn’t have a bris for Evan, the Jewish ceremony that marks the beginning of a boy’s life and welcomes him into the Jewish faith.

“They said there was nothing to celebrate,” she said, insinuating that having a child with a disability was a tragedy. They also estimated that Evan’s life expectancy would be just 13 years.

A local Jewish family who had a child with a disability reached out to the Nodvins, encouraging them to join the disability movement.

“The Jewish community really wrapped around him from the beginning, and Evan became a role model not just in the Jewish community, but across the disability community,” Alison Barkoff said.

Evan Nodvin, now 45, lives in an apartment with a very active work and social life in Atlanta, where Alison Barkoff is originally from. Now, she lives in Washington.

“The future needs to be everyone’s opportunity,” Barkoff said. “It’s becoming more and more the norm, but it certainly isn’t there yet.”

Ehrlich agrees.

“We want to work with whoever and whatever agencies continue to advocate, because improvements need to be made,” said Ehrlich, citing ongoing issues with architecture, housing and transportation for individuals with disabilities as well as other marginalized groups.

Faith in action

“Being Jewish always taught me to not just look out for the other person, but take action,” said Ehrlich, who is a member of the Central Reform Congregation.

In 2010, he received the Walter “Doc” Eberhardt Memorial Award for his dedication to volunteering at the Senior Olympics.

In 2011, he received the Mitzvah Star Award, which recognizes an outstanding member of the Jewish community.

“What made this award so special to me is that 10 years prior, my parents received the same award,” he said. “In my house, I have my award right next to theirs.”

Ehrlich, the youngest of four children, is married with three grown stepchildren and four grandchildren.

“My brother and sister-in-law actually live just around the corner from me, which makes it fun,” said Ehrlich, who lives in Olivette.

When he’s not working, Ehrlich loves to frequent diners, especially Olivette Diner, and Frank and Helen’s in University City.

But when he is working, Ehrlich continues to help others, particularly through teaching and celebrating the differences in Paraquad’s staff and community.

In March, he held an optional seder for the staff that included talks on Jewish history as well as some of the food that was served: charoset, a myriad of apples, nuts and wines that symbolizes the mortar and bricks Israelite slaves used to build Egyptian structures; and matzah, an unleavened bread that the Israelites took with them when they fled Egypt.

“Every day, I know that, even in some small way, I am making a difference,” Ehrlich said. “That’s a very nice feeling to have.”

It’s also a nice feeling, he says, when he reconnects with people he’s helped in the past, particularly the children he coached at the J.

“Sometimes, I run into my old kids who are adults now who I coached at the J,” Ehrlich said. “And one of the first things they ask me is, ‘Do you still do the Hershey Bar Shot?’ ”