LOS ANGELES (AP) - Dr. A. Richard Grossman, a plastic surgeon who founded an internationally known burn center in Los Angeles that treated children, firefighters, plane-crash victims and celebrities including Richard Pryor, has died. He was 81.
Grossman died Thursday at his home in Thousand Oaks, his wife, Elizabeth Grossman, told the Los Angeles Times (https://lat.ms/1i9RHKL). The cause of death wasn’t immediately determined.
Grossman said his dedication to treating burn victims was forged by his experiences as a resident at a Chicago emergency room in 1958 where he saw victims of a parochial school fire.
“I had to count 98 children, all suffocated or burned to death. The catastrophe indelibly stayed in my mind,” Grossman told the Times in 1992.
Grossman wanted a burn-care facility “whose philosophy would be to not just ensure survival, but to restore patients to as close to their pre-injury condition as possible - functionally, emotionally and cosmetically,” according to a biography on the center’s website.
Grossman’s center started in 1969 with two beds at Sherman Oaks Hospital in the San Fernando Valley. It evolved into the 30-bed Grossman Burn Center, now located in the neighboring West Hills area, with other facilities in Bakersfield, Phoenix, Ariz., and Kansas City, Mo.
In 1980, Grossman treated Pryor after the comedian was badly burned in a fire at his home. Most of the patients were not celebrities, however.
“Among the thousands of patients Dr. Grossman treated over the years were countless firefighters who suffered burns in the course of carrying out their duties,” according to a city Fire Department statement. “Dr. Grossman’s commitment to his patients and the community will be his legacy.”
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Information from: Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes.com
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