As a child, Tina Hittenberger, CO(E), spent many summer evenings with her family enjoying picnics at the C.H. Hittenberger Company prosthetics factory, California. Their father, Herman Carl Hittenberger, often joked that they were eating “baloney—not ‘below-knee’—sandwiches.”
Herman Carl Hittenberger represented the third generation of Hittenbergers in O&P. When Tina and her brother, Drew, were born, it seemed fated that they would enter the profession too.
“From the beginning, and almost every day thereafter, it was woven into the fabric of who we were,” Hittenberger says.
A Family Calling
The C.H. Hittenberger Company was established in 1902 by Tina Hittenberger’s grandfather, Carl Herman Hittenberger. His father, her great-grandfather, Herman Carl Hittenberger, was an immigrant who left Germany to begin a new life in the American West making saddles and trusses. He valued practical applications and innovation, so he sent his son back to Germany to acquire skills and learn a new trade: making custom devices to improve people’s lives.
Upon Carl Herman’s return to the United States, he perfected his techniques in Philadelphia then moved to California, where he and his wife, Marie, established a business manufacturing modern prostheses and orthoses. From their home, Marie sewed corsets, jackets tailored for polio patients, and spinal supports. Carl Herman Hittenberger became a pioneer in the field, inventing the first lightweight prosthesis from thin sheets of laminated wood, working closely with the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide contracted services to veterans, designing devices and setting up clinics for patients with polio. He was a founding member of AOPA.
Their son, who inherited his grandfather’s name, Herman Carl Hittenberger, contributed significantly to the field of rehabilitation medicine at the University of California, Berkeley, and established many O&P programs in US universities. As a practitioner, he worked closely with surgeons, hospitals, and ABC to set standards, and he trained and certified many of today’s prosthetists and orthotists. His sister, Martha, was also an active participant in the company.
The C.H. Hittenberger Company subsequently transitioned to Hittenbergers Orthotic and Prosthetic Services and expanded to 15 patient care centers in California.
After majoring in sculpture in college, Tina Hittenberger pivoted back to O&P. She and her brother attended the Northwestern University Prosthetics-Orthotics Center (NUPOC) program. In 1975, Tina Hittenberger became one of the first women to become certified in orthotics. She was one of only a few women pursuing a career in orthotics in the 1970s.
“It was all men,” she says. “There was a kind of locker room vocabulary, bad jokes, pranks, and a definite ‘attitude,’ but I did learn to hold my own.”
Drew also completed his degree at NUPOC and completed his clinical work at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital, Los Angeles. After receiving his prosthetics certification, he was a lead researcher at Prosthetics Research Study in Washington. He invented the Seattle Foot and received the US Presidential Award for Design in 1985.
In her early years as an orthotist, Tina Hittenberger worked with many patients with postpolio conditions, lower-limb impairment, spinal injury, and breast cancer. In the late 1970s, she obtained her pilot’s license, which she used as a member of Los Médicos Voladores, or The Flying Doctors, providing orthoses to patients in Sonora, Mexico. In the early 2000s she worked in Da Nang and Hanoi to set up clinics to help rehabilitate victims of landmines in Vietnam. After the war in Afghanistan, Drew and his father were part of the first international exchange of prosthetic technology and psychological services with Russian and American veterans.
Tina Hittenberger served as an examiner for ABC and chair of the Scientific Program for AOPA, and presented scientific papers at regional, national, and international conferences. She also worked on the ABC facility accreditation team and was an editorial reviewer for the Journal of Prosthetics and Orthotics.
Each member of the Hittenberger family found their careers to be personally fulfilling and knew that together they had an impact on patients and practitioners around the world, Hittenberger says.
Supporting Future Generations of O&P
When the siblings were looking for ways to honor the family legacy and continue to support the next generation of practitioners, they remembered their experiences at NUPOC. In November 2023, Hittenberger made an initial $100,000 lead gift to establish the Hittenberger Legacy Fund Scholarship to support NUPOC. The first scholarship will be awarded during the 2024-25 academic year.
“We are extremely grateful that Tina has chosen to support our center through her generous philanthropy,” says Elliot Roth, MD, the Paul B. Magnuson professor of Rehabilitation Medicine and chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “The field of orthotics and prosthetics needs bright, determined, and well-trained practitioners to help persons with disabilities, injuries, and other functional needs to thrive.”
Hittenberger says that in addition to generating awareness of the growing number of women in the profession, she hopes the scholarship will help encourage others to support a new generation of practitioners.
In July 2023, nearly 50 years after attending classes, Hittenberger visited NUPOC. She met with Roth, Steven A. Gard, PhD, director of NUPOC and an associate professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and McCormick School of Engineering, and other faculty members in the center.
Speaking of NUPOC’s current program, Hittenberger says, “It was phenomenal. It is so state of the art and clearly has a vision for the future. The instructors are clearly masters of their craft, and the students are passionate.”
NUPOC is the largest and oldest accredited O&P training institution in this hemisphere and consistently publishes research that is responsive to today’s advances in science, technology, and healthcare. No institution in the world has contributed more national leaders, more internationally recognized experts, more ABC-certified practitioners, or more new, clinically relevant knowledge to the field.
Roth says it was an honor to host such an accomplished graduate from the program. “During her visit, Tina impressed our faculty and leadership with her personable nature, inquisitiveness, and commitment to the successful future of the orthotics and prosthetics profession. Her generosity of spirit was matched by her genuine interest in the well-being of the students and her commitment to excellence in orthotics and prosthetics education.”
This article is based on an article, “Fourth-Generation Orthotist Supports Scholars,” that originally appeared in The Philanthropist March 2024 newsletter. The Philanthropist is written and edited by Lauren Robinson and is a publication of the Office of Development and Alumni Relations, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
