Amputee of the Month - David Marshall

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Dave Marshall
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First Synthetic Socket

The experiment at Moss was to try to use polypropylene - plastic - instead of wood as a prosthetic socket. Dave jumped a the opportunity and wore the very first synthetic material sockets in the industry.

"I was hit in June and walking without assistive devices in December," he said. "the leg was light weight and easy to walk in. It was quite a Christmas gift."

That Christmas gift turned out to be a gift for countless others as well.

Dave's experience lead him to help others.

"I started to get interested in what the people at Moss were doing when they were working with me. I worked at a bank, and hated that.

"I saw what the therapists and prosthetists did for me, and thought it might be something I could do for somebody else."

So he began hanging around the prosthetists at Moss, looking over shoulders and trying his hand at what they were doing. After four years of study Marshall became a licensed Pennsylvania prosthetist.

"There's something really rewarding about helping people, especially the kids, get on their feet again, getting back to a normal life " he said.

" Whether they need braces or prosthetics, seeing them get up out of the chair is amazing. The light in their eyes..."

But the adjustment from big-league hopeful to BK amp was still a hard one for Marshall himself.

"The hardest adjustment," he said, "was not being able to do what I used to do. Baseball, for example. I didn't have the speed or the mobility and it was frustrating as hell. I played softball, but it wasn't the same." Perhaps the biggest gift Dave received was a "no bull" attitude from his family.

"I really wasn't allowed to suck my thumb for very long," he laughed. "My parents and my sisters - they wouldn't let me not do things. They wouldn't let me NOT be active."

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