Doctor, banker wife are 2014 PAFCOM grand marshals
Edgar and Mary Jane Lerias: a history of community involvement and charity work
PAFCOM organizes Jersey City’s annual Philippine Independence Day Parade, a gathering that parallels the Madison Avenue parade in New York but celebrated weeks later.
The Davao City-born Edgar is a long-standing community leader and practicing physician. He migrated to the United States in 1981, and worked as a house physician in Union Hospital in the Bronx. He has two pediatric offices in Farmingdale and Deer Park. He is also a pediatric consultant at St. Francis Hospital Heart Center in Upstate New York.
Mary Jane is First Vice President of Sterling National Bank, managing the multi-million dollar Global Trade Finance Department. She was the past president of the Auxiliary to the Philippine Medical Association in America and Northern Mindanao Association.
The Leriases have a long history of community involvement and charity work. He has coordinated medical missions in Cebu City, Ilocos Sur and in remote areas in Mindanao. He pioneered a program for indigent Filipino patients to come to the United States for congenital heart defect repairs through the Gift of Life Program of the Rotary Club of New York.
Some of the beneficiaries of Dr. and Mrs. Lerias’s charity work include four burnt victims from the Philippines, who were brought to the United States and treated for reconstructive surgeries in South Carolina.
The couple has three children: Brandon, who completed his biology degree at Boston University; Nicholas, a pediatric resident at Good Samaritan Hospital in Long Island; and Tara, who completed her bachelor’s degree in communications at Colorado University in Boulder.
