Clark & Associates Prosthetics and Orthotics, headquartered in Waterloo, Iowa, has been named the recipient of Iowa’s Grout Museum District’s Van G. Miller Award For Outstanding Support for Our Armed Forces. The annual award is given to an Iowa business that honors, supports, or hires veterans and active-duty military service members. Dennis Clark, CPO, owner of Clark & Associates, purchased Dale Clark Prosthetics from his parents in 1987 and reorganized as Clark & Associates in 2002. The company has eight locations throughout Iowa. Shortly after the reorganization, Clark was contacted by Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington DC (now the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland), to help provide prosthetic care for service members injured in the Iraq War.
“We’d seen a fair number of veterans because of the high veteran population especially here in Black Hawk County and surrounding counties,” Clark said. “So we have had an opportunity to work with veterans before. Not this fresh, and not this young. But when you’re given a task like that, you just go to work. You focus on the task at hand.
“I would guess we treated 600 soldiers,” Clark said. “It was the greatest experience of my professional career, bar none,” Clark said, as it was for the entire staff. “It took a great effort. And it never felt like work.”
Clark, who is semi-retired, continues to work on behalf of active-duty military personnel and veterans.
