OFFICER GLENN F. "BUD" HARE

BADGE 227

11/23/1962 - 12/19/1967

03/13/1931 - 10/02/1999

Medical emergencies were part of Glenn “Bud” Hare’s beat in the 1960s, when he shared ambulance-driving duties with fellow members of the San Diego Police Department.  “I gained more experience in first aid than I cared to know,” he later said.

But the assignment inspired an invention: a leg splint designed to quickly immobilize long-bone fractures of the lower extremities, while simultaneously placing the leg in traction.

His Hare Traction Splint, as he called it, became the signature product of Dyna Med, an

emergency medical care products company he founded 32 years ago in Carlsbad.

Mr. Hare, who marketed his emergency care products to more than 100 countries before retiring in January, died Saturday at Alvarado Hospital Medical Center. He was 68.

The cause of death was complications from a heart attack, said his wife, Florence.

Originally fashioned from bicycle parts, a toilet seat cover, a ratchet and gears from a washing machine, the traction splint became the most successful of several devices Mr. Hare invented. They ranged from a plastic collar for whiplash victims to a fog detection device for motorists.

“When he would go around the country to sell his splints, clients would say, ‘I’ll take six, and what else do you have?’ ” said his wife. “He thought he’d better develop more products.”

As he added more devices to his inventory, Mr. Hare began publishing a catalog featuring products and advice on providing emergency care. It evolved over the years from eight pages to more than 300.

In 1969, Mr. Hare began publishing a magazine, Emergency, featuring products and articles for those in the medical emergency field. He launched another magazine, Police, in 1978, targeting public safety employees who must respond to medical emergencies.

Tired of paying printers to print his publications, Mr. Hare founded a printing division of his company, Dyna Graphics, specializing in the heat-set web procedure whereby the ink is dried by heat.

In addition to his magazines, Mr. Hare published dozens of local and national publications for the commercial market.

With its various divisions, Mr. Hare’s company evolved into Dyna Corp. and grew to include 225 employees and two buildings across from McClellan-Palomar Airport.

During Operation Desert Storm, the business operated around the clock to address escalating medical needs.

In January, Mr. Hare sold Dyna Med to Gall’s, a division of Aramark Inc. But the company retained the Dyna Med name and markets more than 3,500 emergency medical service products, about 10 percent of which it manufactures itself.

There are more than 40 distributors of Dyna Med products throughout the world.

“The Hare Traction Splint is still one of our best-selling products, a standard in the industry,” said Larry Leupold, Dyna Med’s senior

vice president and Mr. Hare’s son-in-law.

After Mr. Hare’s patent on the splint expired, the market was inundated with similar products, marketed as Hare-type traction splints, Leupold said.

Mr. Hare, a longtime Carlsbad resident, was born in Ravenswood, W.Va. In 1943, he moved with his family from Detroit to Encinitas, where his father bought a pool hall and motel.

One of Mr. Hare’s first jobs was frying hamburgers at Moonlight Beach, where his family operated concessions. He graduated in 1948 from San Dieguito High School and served in the Army before working at a variety of jobs in North County.

As a barber in 1957, Mr. Hare operated a shop in downtown Encinitas. Two years later he opened a bar, The Tiki, in Leucadia.

From 1962 until 1967, Mr. Hare was a San Diego police officer. “A rewarding and exciting experience,” he later recalled. “But as I aged it

became less rewarding and more difficult to fight drunks for $28 a day.”

In April 1965, he was one of about 70 police officers who responded to one of the biggest shootouts in San Diego history, which began with an armed robbery at a downtown pawnshop.

An estimated 1,000 shots were exchanged between the bandit and officers at the Hub Jewelry & Loan Co. at Fifth Avenue and F Street. The store owner was shot to death and an officer was grazed before San Diego police Sgt. Allen Brown felled the gunman with three shotgun blasts.

Mr. Hare, poised behind a Coca-Cola delivery truck, never fired a shot in the incident. “In my 5 1/2 years (on the force) I only fired my weapon on one occasion, when I killed a monster, 5 1/2 -foot-long rattlesnake in Del Cerro,” he later wrote.

Before undergoing carotid artery surgery, Mr. Hare worked out three days a week in his home gym with a personal trainer. He also enjoyed playing on the pitch-and-putt golf course in his back yard.

He is survived by his wife, Florence; a daughter, Leslie Leupold of Vista; a son, Dan of Encinitas; a brother, Bill of Vista; and three grandchildren.

THE THIN BLUE LINE

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