Inventors Patenting Big Ideas
Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau:
The sign on the store counter read: “We’ll help you if we can.” Ethel Radke hoped someone could.
At age 85, she was struggling every day to remove compression stockings she needed after hip surgery. That’s what brought her to the Home Depot in St. Louis, where she bought an aluminum rod and asked the man behind the counter to help her bend it into a hook. It became the first component of her new invention.
“I remember someone said, ‘If you find it, you’ll be the luckiest person in the world because nobody has been able to come up with a way to get the stocking off,’” Radke said.
Five years and $12,000 later, Radke, now 90, received a patent on Sept. 18.
Radke is amazed no one had thought of it before. After months of struggling to wiggle her compression stockings off every day, she finally had the ah-ha moment: Pull, don’t push them.
The stockings are connected to reins that wrap around a spool. The spool is connected to the rod, affixed to the bed post. A good tug on the reins slides the stockings down the leg, over the ankle and off the foot, and all in less than a minute, Radke said.
“I found out it could be done, and a couple family members said, ‘Let’s make one,’” she said.
Radke enlisted a niece to help her with the project. Now that the patent has been awarded, the trick has become finding someone to produce it.
Photo by Christian Gooden.
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