Hall of Fame 2008 Inductees

Graduate of MBSH from 1958. Richard Berger Is recognized for both athletics and his work as a medical professional. While at MBSH he lettered In both varsity basketball and baseball. As a senior, he led Dade County in scoring, and was the number one selection for the All Dade and All State basketball teams. He holds the record in high school basketball In Miami for most points with 52 in one game and scored over 1500 In his high school career. He was equally adept at baseball and turned down offers to become a professional baseball player.

"Richie" went on to graduate from Tulane Medical School and specialize in cardiovascular diseases. Some of his accomplishments Include: President of the Heart Association of Greater Miami, Co-creator of a tertiary cardiac care system for the Florida Keys (for which he was declared an honorary "Key West Conch," chairman of the Medical Education Committee of Solapharm/Accu-Break, Co-chairman of the "Florida Project" for the Florida Chapter of the American College of Cardiology, lecturer nationally and internationally and he has practiced medicine In the Miami community for 38 years.

He counts among his accomplishments his marriage to wife, Jacqueline, his five children, two stepchildren, and seven grandchildren.

After leaving Beach High, A. Jay Cristol attended the University of Miami. In 1951 he entered the United States Navy as an aviation cadet and qualified as a Naval aviator. He flew day and night from the air craft carrier Princeton for seven months and then served as a flight instructor at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, California before returning to Miami to finish his University of Miami degree.

Jay completed his Bachelor of Arts at the University of Miami in 1958 and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Miami School of Law in 1959, and his PhD. in international studies in 1997. He served as Special Assistant Attorney General of Florida for four legislative sessions from 1959 through 1963.

He practiced law on weekdays and on weekends spent 13 more years in the Naval Reserve as a Naval aviator flying during the Cuban Missile Crisis and volunteer missions to Vietnam in the 1960s. After being promoted out of his flight status he transferred to the Navy Judge Advocate General Corps where he served an additional 20 years as Naval Reserve Lawyer including assignments to the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo, Italy where he taught Law of Naval Warfare to senior foreign military officers. He also spent summers at Naval Justice School, Newport, Rhode Island, where he was an honorary professor.

In 1985 he was appointed a United States bankruptcy judge for the southern district of Florida and continues to serve in that capacity. When he successfully reorganized Pan American Airways, they named a Boeing 727 airliner "Clipper A. Jay Cristol". He completed a term as Chief Judge of the court and now serves as Chief Judge Emeritus.

A. Jay Cristol is the published author of "The Liberty Incident" (Brasseys, 2003) and "The Liberty Incident Revealed" (United States Naval Institute Press, 2013). He has spoken on this subject at Harvard, various institutions in the United States and Israel and at the invitation of the Egyptian military in Cairo, Egypt. For more than twenty-five years he has taught advanced bankruptcy law as an adjunct professor of the University of Miami School of Law. He continues to enjoy his hobby of flying at every possible opportunity."

Arthur Gilbert graduated from MBHS In 1950. After pre-med at Tulane University he earned his medical degree from the University of Miami. After a medical Internship at Abany Hospital he did a surgery residency at the University of Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital where he currently Is an Associate Clinical Professor In Surgery. After 14 years of general surgery and endoscopy, Art became increasingly Interested In hernia surgery.

In 1984 he opened the Hernia Institute of Florida and limited his practice to abdominal wall hernia surgery. That year he organized the first 3-day international hernia seminar ever done. The response to that meeting convinced him of surgeons' Interest In bettering their results. He pioneered the benefits of mesh repairs and doing same-day ambulatory surgery. In his unique career he repaired more than 22,000 abdominal wall hernias. In 2003, Johnson and Johnson awarded him its second ever Lifetime Achievement Award for his innovative product design and his post-graduate training of more than 2,500 surgeons.

Dr. Gilbert served South Miami Hospital as its Chief of Surgery, Medical Staff President and Board of Trustees member. In 1995 the Florida Surgical Society elected him President. In 1996 he was named in Best Doctors in America. In 1997 he became the founding President of the American Hernia Society, an organization that now has more than 1,000 members. He authored numerous articles, chapters and texts on hernia surgery as well as having lectured at universities worldwide. In 2007, the South Florida chapter of the American College of Surgeons presented Dr. Gilbert Its Distinguished Service Award that "recognized his lifelong dedication and devotion to the improvement and advancement of hernia surgery and for his contributions to the training of future surgeons".

Nicki Englander Grossman served as president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau from 1995-2016.

Ms. Grossman was elected to the Hollywood, Florida Commission in 1978 and elected to the Broward County Commission in 1982. She has served on the Board of Directors for the South Florida Super Bowl Host Committee, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Travel and Tourism Advisory Council, American Coastal Coalition Board of Directors, and the Florida Commission on Tourism (where she was elected 2007-2008 Chair for VISIT FLORIDA).

In 2007, Grossman was inducted into the VISIT FLORIDA Tourism Hall of Fame. Ms. Grossman was named Top 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry by Meeting News. She was also named one of the 100 Most Powerful Women in Tourism by Travel Agent and named one of the Top 25 Marketing Minds by the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI).

Nicki E. Grossman was born and raised in Miami Beach. She is married to retired Circuit Judge Mel Grossman and is the mother of three daughters and "nana" to eight grandchildren.

--Bio from the visitflorida website

On December 31, 1917 "Beth" Teller was born in Wilcox, Georgia. She earned her 3 Master's Degrees at the University of Miami, in reading, counseling and guidance administration. She was one of the first counselors in the Miami-Dade County school system. Equally impressive with her career as a teacher and counselor is her status as Florida's number one ranked tennis player in 1960. Her name appears on the Tennis Hall of Fame on Key Biscayne.

She has served as director of the Florida Tennis Association and knows attending the Hall of Fame Ceremony this November will be one of the most precious moments in her life.

Neal R. Sonnett is a former Assistant United States Attorney and Chief of the Criminal Division for the Southern District of Florida who heads his own Miami, Florida, law firm, concentrating on the defense of corporate, white collar and complex criminal cases throughout the United States.

He has been honored three times by the National Law Journal as one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers In America" and has been profiled by that publication as one of the "Nation's Top Litigators" and one of the "Nation's Top White Collar Criminal Defense Lawyers." He has been included in every edition since 1983 of The Best Lawyers in America and he has been recognized as a top lawyer by numerous international, national, and Florida publications.

Neal has also been a leader in the legal profession on the local, state, and national level. He has served on the American Bar Association Board of Governors, and has served in the ABA House of Delegates for 25 years. He is a Past President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Judicature Society, the Florida Bar Foundation, the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Federal Bar Association South Florida chapter, the Dade County Bar Association, and the Spellman-Hoeveler American Inn of Court.

Neal has been widely recognized for his service to his profession and the criminal justice system. In addition to his induction into the Miami Beach Senior High School Alumni Hall of Fame in 2008, he has been named as a South Florida "Legal Legend" by the 11th Circuit Historical Society and as an "Alumnus of Distinction" by the University of Miami School of Law. He received The Florida Bar Foundation Medal Of Honor, the highest award that can be bestowed upon a lawyer by the legal profession in Florida, for "dedicated service in improving the administration of the criminal justice system and in protecting individual rights precious to our American Constitutional form of government." He also received the ADL Jurisprudence Award for his "distinguished service and inspiring leadership in preserving liberty, counteracting bigotry and advancing the cause of human rights."

Mr. Staloff grew up in Kenvil, N.J., graduated from Miami Beach High School, and received a bachelor's in marketing and finance from the University of Miami in 1967. He worked for the Securities and Exchange Commission before joining the Philadelphia exchange.

He was a director of the former Lehman Bros. derivatives unit and a member of the Philadelphia International Airport Advisory Board Executive Committee, and served on other company boards in the United States and China. He was active with the Allied Jewish Appeal, the Variety Club, and other charities. He played the saxophone and counted the jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie among his friends.

Mr. Staloff invented the currency-trading option in 1982, challenging bank control of world exchange rates, Gregory Millman wrote in The Vandals' Crown: How Rebel Currency Traders Overthrew the World's Central Banks. Mr. Staloff worked for the local exchange from 1971 to 1989. Reagan-era deregulation and the computerization of stock-trading, options contracts enabled traders and their clients to bet on the future of currency exchange rates without buying piles of foreign cash. They were among the earliest of a wave of "derivative" securities that enable investors to invest in economic benchmarks, such as stock indexes or interest rates, without asking permission from the central banks that set rates or corporations whose value derivatives estimated.

Mr. Staloff was also the intellectual founder of what are now called exchange-traded funds (ETFs), investment portfolios that are registered and trade like stocks, which have in recent years crowded aside mutual funds as many Americans' favorite investment vehicle. In 1989 Mr. Staloff left the Philadelphia market to run the New York Commodities Exchange. Mr. Staloff led a cost-cutting drive, pushed for handheld trading devices, sought to extend strong Philadelphia-style management control over independent-minded traders, and discussed a merger with the rival New York Mercantile Exchange. Returning to Philadelphia, Mr. Staloff joined Bloom to form Bloom Staloff Corp., which became a busy trader for partners including Salomon Bros., Smith Barney, Dean Witter, and other leading U.S. and European banks and brokers.

He had a series of strokes and died in 2019 after suffering a heart attack.

--Bio from Philadelphia Inquirer