Artificial leg need a fix? Good!
SHRINERS HOSPITAL | If artificial limb 84-yr.-old built broke, it means 'they're using them'
Alfred "Denny" Denison spends dozens of hours crafting artificial limbs for children, expensive limbs that can break in an instant in a fall off a skateboard or a bad landing while shooting hoops.
But he's enthusiastic about repairs.
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times)
"Then we know they're really using them," he said.
Denison, 84, of Tinley Park, is believed to be the oldest full-time prosthetist working in the United States. He's currently working full-time in the Hickory Hills office of Scheck & Siress, a local prosthetics and orthotics company, and spends most Fridays with colleagues at the Shriners Hospitals for Children-Chicago. There, children with orthopedic conditions are treated for free.
On Friday, he joked to 13-year-old William Walker that it was good Walker had a "spare tire," or old prosthetic, to use after Walker broke off his newest prosthetic foot during a bad landing in a skateboarding trick.
William was 5 years old when his leg was amputated below the knee after he was hit and dragged by a car. He has worked with Denison in the years since, and said his artificial limb doesn't prevent him from participating in any activity.
"I can run around, play football and soccer," said the seventh-grader at Elden D. Finley Junior High School in Chicago Ridge. "I'm on the school's basketball team."
"He's got a girlfriend, so he's got no hangups" about his prosthesis, said Sandra Walker, his mother.
She credits Denison with helping transition her son to a normal life, despite tragedy at an early age.
"He's always made us feel welcome," she said. "He likes to joke."
He also likes to make his patients, regardless of age, feel as normal and mobile as possible despite their devastating injuries.
For Karson Milsteadt, a 13-year-old from Peoria treated by Denison on Friday, that means fine-tuning his leg, the consequence of a birth defect, before his baseball and basketball seasons.
For Bill Veeck, the former White Sox owner and Denison's most famous patient, mobility included drilling a hole into his wooden leg that doubled as an ashtray.
Born Alfred Perkovsky, Denison emigrated from Estonia in 1938 when he was 13 years old. Drafted into the Army during World War II, he was trained in fitting and creating artificial wooden limbs. He has thrived for more than six decades in prosthetics despite never graduating from high school and drastic changes in the industry, including a transition to flexible plastic and aluminum limbs.
A widower whose wife of 53 years died in 2001, Denison spends his downtime grooming his half acre yard, golfing or watching golf on television and cleaning his swimming pool. Retirement isn't appealing, he said, joking that his "little 401(k)" will run out if he lives as long as his mother, who was 100 years old when she died.
"I was confident I was going to be able to succeed in this business," he said. "I'm a MacGyver. I try to solve any little problems myself."
