Grady A. Dugas

Grady A. Dugas, M.D. (October 24, 1923 - March 25, 2007), was a Louisiana physician who invented the "Safer Automatic Wheelchair Wheel Locks", a patented device designed for those who sometimes forget to lock their wheelchairs. For four decades Dugas was engaged in a family medical practice in tiny Marion in Union Parish, a part of the Monroe Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, in northeast Louisiana.

As the medical director of the Marion Nursing Home for some three decades, he became aware of the problem of wheelchair-related falls among semi-ambulatory patients who did not or could not remember to use manual brakes on their wheelchairs. Some patients in wheelchairs, particularly the elderly, have a tendency to fall and injure themselves when trying to stand because they fail to engage the manual locks. Dugas hence attempted to find a way to save these patients from potentially debilitating injuries. He began his experimentation with locking systems and procured his first patent (#5,203,433) on April 20, 1993. The wheelchair locks/brakes are made of stainless steel, and worked well but were heavy and had a tendency to require maintenance.

In 1996, Dugas joined Bill Hoge of United Plastic Molders in Jackson, Mississippi, for further experimentation to improve the wheelchair locks/brakes. A second patent (# 5,984,334) was issued on November 29, 1999). Dugas and Hoge formed the corporation SAFER Automatic Wheelchair Wheel Locks of Mississippi, Inc. The locks sell for approximately $120.

Dugas was born in Sulphur in Calcasieu Parish in southwestern Louisiana to Sona Dugas (1894-1964) and the former Mildred Meyers (1900-1987). In 1941, Dugas graduated from Sulphur High School as president of the senior class. He attended McNeese State University (then Junior College) in Lake Charles, the seat of Calcasieu Parish. In 1942, he left McNeese and joined the U.S. Army Air Corps He served in the European theater with the medical air evacuation unit stationed in England and France for the remainder of World War II.

After World War II, he returned to college. In 1949, he graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and thereafter in 1953 from the LSU Medical School in New Orleans. After a year of internship at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio, Texas, he moved with his wife, the former Annie Jo Sehon, and infant son to Marion, where, in 1954, he joined Dr. Virgil Gully in the Marion Hospital-Clinic. After Gully left for health reasons, Dugas maintained the hospital until 1965, and thereafter the clinic and private practice until 1991.

Discover magazine reported in 1993 how Dugas had used maggots to cure the bedsores of an 80-year-old male patient. Some of the sores were nearly an inch deep, and infection had set in. Conventional therapies, including antibiotics and surgery, had failed. Dugas told the magazine that he remembered his grandmother, who was diabetic, had undergone successful maggot treatment in the 1930s. He followed suit, and the man's sore healed within a month. Instead of facing amputation, the patient instead went into the hospital for skin grafts.

In 1972, Marion named Dr. Dugas "Outstanding Citizen of the Year". On March 30, 1990, Marion declared "Dr. Dugas Day", when special awards were presented. In 2005, Union Parish proclaimed him the "Outstanding Citizen of the Year for Community Service".

Dugas died in Monroe. The Dugases had a daughter, Denise (born ca. 1958) of Monroe, who is married to Joel G. Taylor, and four sons, two of whom, Rene David Dugas of Monroe and Christopher L. Dugas of Buffalo, Missouri, are also physicians. The other sons are Stephen Emile Dugas (born ca. 1954) of Kansas City, Missouri, and Kenneth L. Dugas (born ca. 1957) of Plano, Texas.

Dugas is interred in Roark Cemetery in Marion.