You can trust our 95+ years of proudly helping patients enhance their lives…

While most in Charlotte had left the First World War behind by 1925, many veterans in the city were still struggling with physical wounds that would last a lifetime. This led Glenn Burrows and Robert Grigsby, themselves veterans of The Great War, to convert an old truck trailer into a workshop to provide braces and artificial limbs for the Charlotte area. Carolina Brace was born.

Carolina Brace grew in its first twenty years to become the main provider of orthotics to Presbyterian Hospital and Charlotte Memorial Hospital (now known as CMC). The following decade would prove to be a period of growth for Carolina Brace, orthopedic, neuro and rehabilitation medicine itself. In the aftermath of World War II, the increasing numbers of injured veterans fueled growth for the orthopedic community, leading to Carolina Brace hiring two recently discharged veterans – Clarence Burrows and Tom Owens – that would eventually come to own Carolina Brace.

When the 1952 polio epidemic found the Charlotte region, Carolina Brace became an integral part of the team of professionals dedicated to helping these victims overcome their tragedy. As the Korean War in the early 1950s further increased Charlotte’s population of injured veterans, Carolina Brace continued to work with Presbyterian Hospital, Charlotte Memorial Hospital, the VA, Children’s Special Health Services, and many others to promote the quality of life of Charlotte’s citizens.

Over the next fifty years, Carolina Brace continued to serve the people of the Charlotte region by providing expertly crafted orthotics and prosthetics as well as innovations to the orthotics industry. In 2000, Tom Owens sold Carolina Brace to his son, Tim Owens, a Certified Orthotist who had founded Owens Orthotics in 1995. Tim then merged both the companies and the names to form Owens Carolina, as the company is known today.

From originally serving the people of Charlotte in the back of an old truck, we are now proud to provide services for patients and practitioners nationwide. Our combination of research, innovation, and experience is exemplified in our workshop, where cobbling tools originating from Carolina Brace’s original truck in 1925 sit beside cutting edge modeling equipment that is the future of the orthotics and prosthetics industry. We promise to continue to innovate in our industry to further improve the lives of our patients, just as we promise to retain our focus of serving the people of the Charlotte area of North Carolina. As we approach our 96th year of business, we would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve you, both for now and for many more years to come.