A Long Way From the Days of Wooden Legs : Prosthetics: Since 1960, the Nunez family has been perfecting the art of fitting artificial limbs. Modern materials have helped.

Eager to dance at his grandson’s wedding, Bob De La Fuente, 76, an ex-boxer, stood in the paneled fitting room at Adept Prosthetics in Downey, a shop next to a takeout pizza place in a mini-mall on Imperial Highway.

De La Fuente, an East Los Angeles resident who lost his legs below the knees to gangrene 14 years ago, was getting his artificial legs readjusted by Jesus (Jesse) Nunez, the shop’s founder, and his brother, Jose, now the owner.

Easygoing men in their early 60s, the Nunezes wore smocks and had wrenches in their hands. It was impossible to tell that Jesse Nunez has an artificial leg himself, one with a hydraulic ankle that allows him to ski and bowl.

Jesse Nunez lost his lower right leg to a grape crusher at a Sacramento winery in 1948. He had it replaced with a wooden leg, the only kind made then.

The accident drew him to the prosthetics field.

“The fellow who made my leg was setting up a business in Sacramento and he talked me into helping him,” he said.

After studying prosthetics and orthotics at UCLA, and doing work for Rancho Los Amigos Hospital in Downey, he opened the shop on Imperial Highway in 1960 and soon after brought his younger brother into the business.

The Nunezes now have three other shops--one in Santa Ana, owned by Jesse’s son, Daniel Nunez; one in Hemet, owned by Jose, and one in Loma Linda, owned by Jose’s son, Jose Nunez Jr.

De La Fuente, steadying himself with a cane, began to try out his readjusted legs. He stepped along the shop’s corridor, whose walls held bright paintings and a narrow mirror. He was beginning to walk more easily, though he admitted, “You do wiggle a little bit.”

The corridor winds from Adept’s lobby, where a rack contains canes and crutches, to various rooms. In one nook, a dozen flesh-colored prostheses, some with shoes still on, awaited repairs in the fluorescent-lit workshop a few yards away.

Cluttered with lathes, vises and saws, the workshop is used mainly for making cone-shaped plastic sockets, although a sign on the wall reads, “How to make a foot.”

The socket is the part of the prosthesis that fits onto the patient’s residual limb or stump. After the socket is made and fitted, the rest of the prosthesis is assembled with robotic-looking parts ordered from prosthetics supply houses.

The thick catalogues from these companies fill shelves in Adept’s office. They list page after page of prostheses, tools and assortments of nuts, screws, plates, bolts and washers--and their prices. A knee modular is $325, a hip joint strap is $10.70, a mechanical hand is $326.90 and a washer for a child’s foot is 4 cents.

A below-the-knee prosthesis can cost from $1,500 to $15,000, depending on its sophistication. Above-the-knee artificial legs are much more expensive, and electronic arms can cost about $25,000.

Office manager Bill Kruse, 46, sits among the catalogues. Wounded in Vietnam, he had both legs amputated below the knees.

“We were sitting around at the VA Hospital (in Long Beach) one day and got to talking about who was making the best legs,” Kruse recalled. “Mr. Nunez was, so I came over here.”

Not only did Jesse make Kruse’s first artificial legs, he also gave him a job.

“A new amputee walks in and I let them know what to expect,” Kruse said. “When I say I’m an amputee, that perks them up.”

Back in the fitting room, Jose Nunez made some further readjustments on De La Fuente’s legs. “We make sure the feet don’t drag on the floor,” Jose said as he also checked the alignment of the pylons--the titanium pipes that run from the socket to the foot.

De La Fuente recalled his first days as an amputee: “I didn’t know nothin’ about artificial legs. I got real low, real depressed, didn’t want to do nothing. At the VA hospital they gave me legs, but I wasn’t satisfied. I couldn’t walk very much. Then I was sent to Jesse.”

Over the past five years, the Downey shop has served more than 2,000 patients, two-thirds of them amputees, according to Kruse. The rest come in for leg braces.

The brothers are among 2,000 certified practitioners in the country, according to a spokesman for the American Orthotic and Prosthetic Assn. in Alexandria, Va.

Patients are referred to the Nunezes by doctors, physical therapists and hospitals.

Marvin Lottman, an orthopedist in Anaheim, said of Jesse: “He does very competent work and I trust his judgment. A good orthotist or prosthetist is a very imaginative individual who can work with many materials.”

In the Nunezes’ early days as prosthetists, wood was one of the few materials used; it had been that way for a century, since, according to legend, J. E. Hanger, a wounded Civil War soldier, made an artificial leg for himself out of a barrel.

Leather and aluminum were also used in the 1950s, but now ultralight materials such as titanium, carbon fiber and graphite are the rage.

Jesse still makes wooden legs now and then because some people, who have had them for a long time, cannot adjust to a modern prosthesis.

From looking at De La Fuente walk, it was obvious how far the prosthetics business has progressed.

“Balance means everything,” said the old boxer, who now trains fighters and works with children in Baldwin Park. “You get out of balance and you don’t know what the hell to do.”

He said that because of his height he had trouble balancing himself on the first legs he received before coming to Adept. It had been like walking on stilts.

“I was 6 feet 3,” De La Fuente said. “I didn’t have no balance. Then I came in here four years ago and told them to make me be a 6-footer. That made the difference. Now I’m real content.

“If I was young again, I feel I could still box. They (the Nunezes) brought my life back.”

Jesse Nunez recognizes the worthiness of his profession.

“We make a lot of difference,” he said. “They change their way of thinking when they finally become adapted to the prosthetic.”

So Jesse and Jose Nunez and Bill Kruse watched with satisfaction as De La Fuente strolled along, ready to dance.