When terrorists left lower Manhattan in rubble last September, it wasn't immediately clear who they were or what they would do next. The only thing everyone knew from the start was that people throughout the city – victims' families, fire fighters, police officers, EMTs, and rescue workers – would need help.

That's all it took for Dr. Monte H. Greenawalt to spring into action, as he and his family and company have so often done in the past.

Giving is second nature to the Greenawalts, and it started with Dr. Monte, whose future was dictated by his vow to dedicate himself to helping others.

He made that vow while struggling to survive, paralyzed and in an iron lung from the effects of contaminated inoculations. As a young Naval recruit in World War II, he had been preparing to ship overseas when the near-fatal dose caused his life to take a drastic turn.

"First, I prayed that if I survived, I'd do everything I could to help people," he recalled, in an interview for The Chiropractic Journal. After a while, however, he stopped praying to live and, faced with the possibility of lifelong disability, prayed for death.

Although medical treatment didn't help, he scoffed at the idea of seeing a chiropractor. "I wasn't going to one of those quacks," he snorted. "I'd had enough education to know that much about them."

Then, he mused that perhaps a good twist to his neck might kill him and be the answer to his prayer. So he submitted to chiropractic.

The twist didn't kill him. In fact, the care he received from Dr. Demming – now deceased but never forgotten by Greenawalt – had him up on his feet in no time. "He changed my life, and that saved my life," Greenawalt said.

Because Demming was a graduate of Lincoln Chiropractic College, Greenawalt enrolled there as well, wanting to follow his path to a life of helping others.

"When I went to school, we were taught to serve our patients, not ourselves. It was only later – in the 1950s – that people went from wanting to serve to wanting to make money," he noted with a slow, sad shake of his head.

In 1948, he opened his first office in the basement of a bank in Dubuque, Iowa. "The thing I cared about was getting the patients the care they needed. No more, no less," he stated.

He gave his patients attention, care, and love – but refused to give them control over his office. If, after communicating to them the power of chiropractic adjustments, they didn't agree with his advice, he'd tell them his C.A. would be glad to help them make an appointment with another chiropractor who would do what they wanted. "It was my way or the highway," Greenawalt said with a chuckle. "But not many left my office."

His formula for success was easy. "It's not what school you go to, or what technique you use," he explained with obvious passion. "Those things aren't important. It's the honesty, sincerity and integrity you bring to your work and life."

Those three keys defined his life and led him to search for better ways to bring the power of chiropractic to his patients. He applied innovative ideas to his practice, including using a plumb line and mirrors to show patients the misalignments in their spines ("Keep your spine in line and you'll feel fine," was his office's motto). He made arrangements with the bank to finance patients' care, personally guaranteeing each loan.

And, in a move that would change the course of chiropractic history, he began investigating the relationship between feet and subluxations. He had been given hospital privileges and noticed that patients restricted to a prone position usually held their adjustments longer than those who walked around.

"I quickly realized the feet had something to do with structure," he said. Greenawalt was so convinced he was onto something significant that he paid to have a podiatrist fit 100 patients with orthotics to "level" their posture. He was amazed at the results, and began making spinal-pelvic stabilizers himself, calling them foot levelers.

His own research, conducted at Palmer's Clearview Sanatarium with Dr. Boardman, gave him the evidence he needed to bring his work to B.J. Palmer. "I had never met B.J. in my life and I was excited," he reminisced with a lingering echo of the thrill he must have felt back then. "I was going change chiropractic, I was going to help adjustments hold."

Surprisingly, B.J.'s reception was less than enthusiastic, Greenawalt admitted with a hearty laugh. "Boardman started to talk and I don't think he got 30 words out of his mouth when B.J. grabbed all our stuff and threw it into the wastebasket!"

The experience might have devastated anyone else but it didn't sway Greenawalt. He knew from firsthand experience that his foot levelers could help balance a patient's feet and prevent muscular distortions that could cause subluxations.

So sure was he that he founded Foot Levelers, Inc., in 1952, establishing the company that would not only help patients hold their adjustments better, but would become one of chiropractic's most generous philanthropic resources.

Through its nearly 50-year history, Foot Levelers has donated more than $7 million to chiropractic organizations and colleges. It has consistently promoted and endorsed the chiropractic profession, holding dozens of educational professional seminars every year and donating the proceeds back to the chiropractic profession. It has funded scholarships as well as provided grants to college libraries, classrooms, and research facilities; sponsored academic chairs. It has supported research and special events and spearheaded fundraising for important chiropractic legislative campaigns.

This year, in the days following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, the Greenawalts mounted a massive effort to raise funds for Red Cross relief, matching donations from D.C.s around the world with $200,000 of their own money. Nearly half a million dollars was raised for this vital cause.

When asked why it's so important for him to give back to the profession, Greenwalt stated without hesitation, "We need each other. If we could only recognize that we can share with each other, we could join hands in a solidarity that nothing could penetrate. We could have power beyond anything we could ever dream."