Nov. 11, 1950 – Sept. 18, 2023
Jeffrey M. Genrich, who managed his family’s hotels in Amherst, Blasdell and the U.S. Virgin Islands, died unexpectedly Sept. 18 in Albuquerque, N.M., where he had gone to attend a funeral. He was 72.
Born in Buffalo, the youngest of four children, he was a grandson of J. Harold Genrich, a builder who developed a large part of Amherst. His father, Willard A. Genrich, was an attorney, developer and chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents. He grew up on Getzville Road in Snyder, where his family kept horses. He and his sisters won prizes in horse shows.
He attended Smallwood Elementary School, graduated in 1968 from Amherst Central High School and went on to complete a bachelor’s degree from Hobart College, where he was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity. He later earned certification from the Nolan School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University.
Mr. Genrich managed the Best Western Regency Hotel in Blasdell from 1980 until it closed in 1990 and regularly hosted Buffalo Bills players there. He then was manager of the landmark Lord Amherst Hotel in Snyder, designed for his family by Duane Lyman, the dean of Western New York architecture, and opened in 1962.
He also was manager of the Holger Danske Hotel, which his father helped build in 1970 on the harborfront in Christiansted on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
He became president of the two hotels following the death of his father in 1999. He continued managing the Lord Amherst, now the Reikart House, until it was sold in 2011. Until he retired in 2017, he commuted several times a year to oversee operations in St. Croix.
He had been a Buffalo Bills season ticket holder since his father bought him one for the team’s first season in 1960. Also a fan of Broadway musicals since he was a boy, he was a longtime supporter of Shea’s Performing Arts Center.
He and his wife, the former Heather Anne Pratt, a Californian transplanted to St. Croix, met on the pool deck of the Holger Danske. Survivors also include a step-daughter, Adia Fenn; two sisters, Willa Long and Ellen Rusling; and a brother, Willard Jr.
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