Larry Sherrer – UH football star to Kukui Grove ophthalmologist By PHIL HAYWORTH – TGI Business Editor Take the construction site next to Taco bell across from the Kukui Grove Shopping Center. It’s a rather innocuous site, with the requisite
Larry Sherrer – UH football star to Kukui Grove ophthalmologist
By PHIL HAYWORTH – TGI Business Editor
Take the construction site next to Taco bell across from the Kukui Grove Shopping Center. It’s a rather innocuous site, with the requisite plastic dust shield and hard-hat wearing workers, a few cranes, a work shed.
Just another small professional building going up? No. This is Doc Sherrer’s place.
You know, Larry Sherrer, the 1971 All-American football standout from the University of Hawaii?
Before he became the owner of Kaua‘i’s Pacific Eye Center and Eye Wear in Lihu‘e, Sherrer spent two years as one of the highest-paid rookie running backs with the New York Giants.
“Nineteen thousand plus a three thousand signing bonus,” he recalled.
He logged another three years with the Canadian Football League breaking records — and ligaments.
After all the abuse, Sherrer went back to school — UH med school, that is.
“I figured I had been through surgery so many times myself that I’d like to know what it’s like awake, to see what’s happening,” he jokes.
Sherrer played under then-offensive line coach Larry Price and alongside renown local singer Henry Kapono. Even Garden Island Newspaper Editor Chris Cook remembers Sherrer as the Big Man On Campus.
He married a year after graduating med school and, 15 years (and four kids) later, the self-described “late bloomer” is living out a dream on his “favorite island” of Kaua‘i.
“Patternless edgers.” “Single-vision glasses in less than an hour.”
That’s the lingo he lays on his clients now, unlike the licks he laid on linebackers out to kill him. While the doctor is promising to match any deal on glasses, he’s regaling you with tales of the gridiron, both past and present.
Indeed, he’s the kind of guy you could imagine talking with about the upcoming college season over a “cold one” just as easily as ocular degeneration or corneal transplants.
His easy manner has earned him a solid reputation as the doctor with miles and miles of optical styles — and the nimblest fingers from Ni‘ihau to Hanalei.
Success will launch Sherrer out of his tiny 1,700 square-foot digs across from the Kukui Grove cinema early next year, and up to his new two-story, $1.25 million, 6,000 square-foot building. Soon, the spot next to Taco Bell will sport a sleek new building boasting the biggest selection of eyewear on the island, with space to spare for another dentist or doctor.
“Six examination rooms, so that people can get in and out. We’ll have some of the best technology, too,” Sherrer said. There won’t be a laser surgery, a.k.a LASIK, he says, but there will be the O.C.T. machine, an “ocular topographic” thingamajigger. It’s complicated to pronounce, but Sherrer explained that it helps with the early detection of Glaucoma, among other things.
That high-tech knowledge makes ophthalmologists more than just optometrists with a funny title. In fact, Sherrer is one of four eye doctors on the island, all medical doctors qualified to operate on everything from cataracts to corneal emergencies.
Between his clinic in Waimea, his office in Lihu‘e and regular surgeries at one of Kaua‘i’s hospitals, Sherrer’s is, indeed, a busy man.
So don’t be surprised to find that, the next time you’re eyeballing the latest pair of designer rims — or having delicate eye surgery at a local hospital — your under the care of Hawaii’s one and only Ophthalmologist Doc-Jock, a guy who’s got it all: brains, brawn, the perfect family and, soon, his own building.
Business Editor Phil Hayworth can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 251) and phayworth@pulitzer.net
