WRNMMC, Bethesda, Md.  –   As Dennis Harris walked into the orthotics/prosthetics fabrication room at Walter Reed on Oct. 2, he had a look on his face that could have been interpreted as, “What is going on in here?”

In the room was the medical center’s leadership team including its director Navy Capt. (Dr.) Melissa Austin, chief of staff Navy Capt. (Dr.) Kelly Elmore, senior enlisted leader Army Sgt. Maj. Dennis Waycaster, and a number of Harris’ colleagues from the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Also in the room was retired Army Col. Larry Reiman, a long-time Walter Reed beneficiary and patient of Harris.

An orthotist at Walter Reed for more than two decades, Harris shared that he enjoys “giving his patients a better quality of life” as he helps design and fabricate medical supportive devices, and measure and fit patients for them. “I enjoy helping people. I’ve been doing it for 40 years, and I can’t see myself doing anything else,” he said with sincerity.

Harris began his career as a Navy corpsman, worked in private industry, and came back to work for the military at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) in the early 2000s. He was part of the move of personnel from WRAMC to Bethesda when the Army and Navy joined forces as a result of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) law that formed Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC) in 2011. Since then, he has been providing care to patients at WRNMMC, the “flagship of military medicine,” Austin said.

It's Harris’ quality care that motivated Reiman to write a letter to Austin, to which the WRNMMC director replied, “It won’t come as a surprise to you to know that you’re not the first person to rave about Mr. Harris and our Orthotic Clinic…I was hoping you might be willing to share your own and your family’s history with Walter Reed.” She added to those sentiments when she recognized Harris on Oct. 2, presenting him with a rarely given WRNMMC coin.

Austin shared that while she receives a number of letters and notes trumpeting the care of WRNMMC providers, occasionally she gets one “that’s just over the top. It’s these types of stories that make Walter Reed special,” she added.

Reiman explained that when his father-in-law, the late Army Gen. Robert Kingston, commanded the Third Special Forces “way back when,” he made a parachute jump and hit his foot on a rock upon landing. “He had this pain in his foot for 20 years, and some say that’s what made him such a mean general,” Reiman jokingly said. “When General Kingston was commanding general of U.S. Central Command, it was found out that it wasn’t a bunion, as many of the doctors thought, that was causing him severe pain, but the foot had been broken all that time.”

Reiman added that an operation on Kingston’s foot wasn’t successful, so the foot was rebroken.

“It healed, but he could hardly walk on it,” Reiman shared. “Dennis [Harris] had helped me so much that I had General Kingston make an appointment with him. Dennis came in, made molds and did electronic measurements, and he finally broke the code, making an insert for General Kingston which changed his quality of life tremendously. He could finally walk in some comfort. You can attribute that to Dennis Harris for following through. He won’t let it go once if it doesn’t work. He’ll fix it.”

Reiman added that Harris has helped him for about a decade and a half with orthotics for his feet. “He basically keeps me walking,” he shared.
Retired Army Col. (Dr.) Paul Pasquina commended all of the orthotists and prosthetists at Walter Reed, recognizing them for their care of patients with “complex challenges rarely if ever seen at other treatment facilities in the world.”