Dr. Lawrence Richard Gelman wears many hats in the Rio Grande Valley, including anesthesiologist, hospital administrator, author, film producer, media personality, and conservative activist.
A distinguished physician, Dr. Gelman is a second-generation Polish-American Jew whose parents barely escaped the Holocaust and found solace in America. Growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust, this son of newly-minted American immigrants developed his political beliefs viewing freedom as a remedy for the evils of government control.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Gelman received his medical degree in anesthesia from the Medical College of Wisconsin, and his first experience with Texas was during a residency in Lubbock following graduation. While studying medicine, he met his wife of 38 years, Maria Esperanza in Monterrey, Mexico, with whom he had four children: Alexander, Zina, Rachel and Sharon. His wife wanted to live close to her family, thus McAllen became their home.
His passion for liberty has resonated with his children, and in particular has inspired his oldest daughter, Zina Bash to seek a career in public service. Zina previously served in the Trump Administration on the Domestic Policy Council and currently works as a senior counsel for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
When asked about his political affiliations, Dr. Gelman’s response is not that of a typical activist. 
“I don’t belong to anything, I hate politics…We [as a society] are affected by what goes on in Washington, and Austin; my involvement wasn’t intentional, it was more of a self-defense. When you’ve got your kids, [you] want to try to return the way things used to be, the way things are supposed to be.”
Opportunities have always presented themselves to Dr. Gelman. His first involvement in the political realm resulted from the realization of doctors’ enslavement to hospital corporations. After the purchase of a bankrupt outpatient center in the ’90s (Doctor’s Hospital at Renaissance), he realized, “what government says [versus] what they are, are two completely different things.”
Following the philosophy of Thomas Paine’s suspiciousness of big government, Gelman states,
“everyone has an agenda [that] is not the Founding Fathers, there’s a reason why the Founding Fathers didn’t want to tax the people. They didn’t want federal governmental control without the approval of the states…I see this country disappearing on the present trajectory we are in. I would like to assist in changing the trajectory back to its original intent.”
By the early 2000’s, Dr. Gelman began his journey in the political arena as he became a commentator with the local news-talk radio station, 710 AM KURV. In preparation for these segments he developed an expertise on a wide range of topics, especially the U.S. Constitution.
“Talk Back with Dr. Lawrence Gelman,” is what followed as he focused on today’s political, social and economic issues from a traditional/unrelenting conservative perspective. Subjects included abortion, foreign policy, healthcare and energy. He even purchased airtime that reached audiences in New York.
His purpose? To “educate people who did not know.”
His next project was his book, The Fall From Grace (2014), a publication on the gradual undermining of American constitutional values by the counter revolutionary forces of fascism. The book describes how the ideology of statism attempts to obfuscate and outright ignore the constitutional limits imposed on the government by the Founding Fathers.
His most recent undertaking is The Hoax of Man-Made Global Warming (2017) which he wrote and produced. In this documentary, he conveys to the audience the archaic methods used by the “hucksters” who perpetrate the “convenient lie” of man-made global warming/climate change for the benefit of their agendas.
“Our Founding Fathers wanted us to be free. This is the first society founded on government liberating the people; ‘We the people’; ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ we spout these words without understanding. What was it that made it a Declaration of Independence? The Constitution is supposed to be eternal not ephemeral, to try to create a system that would be self-perpetuating. The Constitution created a government never created before,” states Dr. Gelman.
Through different mediums, Dr. Gelman has successfully provided a path for others to educate themselves and appreciate the philosophy our Founders left behind; freedom.
Dr. Gelman is an avid collector of religious stained glass windows from across the nation. His private collection (largest in South Texas) has inspired him to open a museum in 2018, the Gelman Stained Glass Museum in San Juan. In addition, he sponsors the “Gelman Constitutional Scholars.” This program allows high school/college students an opportunity to apply for a scholarship by submitting an essay based on the foundations of the U.S. Constitution.
