Archive: Around Town

McCune, Ainslie & Associates PT has been a fixture on the corner of Graham and Triphammer Roads in the Village of Lansing for 12 years.  The physical therapy firm has been part of the Tompkins County landscape for well over 20 years, and Tim Ainslie, an Orthopedic Clinical Specialist in Physical Therapy, has spent 22 of them helping people get well here.

In December Ainslie will be moving from Ithaca to Princeton, New Jersey.  "I'm getting ready for change," he says.  "I just found out this week that New Jersey has accepted me as a Physical Therapist (PT), so I will be licensed there.  I plan to continue being a PT, but I am not sure exactly in what role yet."

Ainslie will be following his wife Carolyn, who recently became the Vice President of Finance at Princeton.  That follows a pattern that many dual-career families follow, and this is not the first time that has prompted a move for this couple.

A native of Ithaca, Ainslie married Carolyn after graduating from Bucknell University, where he studied animal behavior.  Ainslie  had worked summers in a nursing home and had been athletic in high school and college.  After college they moved to Rochester where she went to graduate school and he got a job as resident director of a group home run by the Cerebral Palsy Association.  It was while working there that he began to think about working with people, rather than studying animals.

"I thought I might be doing research," he says.  "I found out while I was in college that I didn't enjoy it that much.  I wanted to do something that was more hands on and interactive.  I could see myself working with a geriatric population.  I could see myself working with a developmentally disabled population, and with an athletic population.  I saw PT as a way that I could go in any of those directions.  That was when I started exploring schools."


When Carolyn got a job in North Carolina, Ainslie took some classes at the University of North Carolina, and began taking Physical Therapy classes at Duke University.  After two years he emerged with a Masters in Physical therapy.  The couple found themselves moving again, when she got a job at Cornell.

Ainslie knew David McCune in high school, and by now McCune had established his practice in Ithaca and wanted to add a therapist.  Ainslie joined the firm, which at that time was on Cliff Street, downstairs from Orthopedic Associates.  At the time there were three therapists including McCune, Ainslie, and Bob Sprague, along with about five support staff.

Twelve years ago they outgrew their space and moved to their current Village of Lansing location.  Since then the firm has doubled with seven therapists and seven or eight support people.  Ainslie says that when they moved to the Triphammer Road location they had about half the space their offices now occupy.

While Ainslie was a partner for a time, he hasn't been involved in the business end for a decade.  He says he enjoys bonding with his patients, who run the gamut from high school students to older adults.

"It's fun to work with kids in sports, because they're typically very motivated to get better, and they get better quicker," he says.  "It's often the individual connections that you make.  I worked with a lady this afternoon who is 79 years old.  She is very spunky and full of life, and it's fun to work with her."


The firm treats everything from patients recovering from hip replacements to neck problems, back and spinal problems.  "Spine problems are probably the biggest things we see," he notes.  "Lower back and neck, shoulders are next.  Then knees, wrists, hands, ankles."

Over his 22 years practicing in Ithaca Ainslie has seen changes in the profession, but he says that matching the right therapy to the patient is important.  "Certainly some approaches have changed," he says.  "You often find that there is some value to the older practices with the right patient population.  In PT some practitioners have been aggressive in marketing their particular treatment regimen that might fit for a portion of the population.  I think the trick to what a good, intelligent therapist does is that you pick the right treatment for the right patient.  Having multiple tools that you can pull out of your bag is an important part of what we do.  So we keep adding tools to the bag."

Over the years Ainslie has been quite active in the community.  Last winter he taught an exercise class at the YMCA, and he is an active Rotarian who is involved with the foreign student exchange program, and most recently with the Share The Warmth program.  Last year over 350 families, over 1,000 individuals received clothing and blanketsfrom the program, and Ainslie says that one of the collection boxes will be at the McCune, Ainslie & Associates office over the next four weeks.

For years he has coached teams for his two sons.  Alex is currently at Cornell, but this year Ainslie is coaching his younger son Adam's eigth grade Lacrosse team.  He has also been seen cleaning litter from the streets in the Village, and taught an exercise class last winter at the YMCA across the street from his office.

He continues to enjoy working as a physical therapist, and plans to continue in the profession in New Jersey.  "My favorite part about the job is definitely the people that you meet and interact with," he says.  "One of the things that I like about physical therapy is that I get to know people.  Maybe it's over a four or six week period, but you may see them ten or twelve times.  You develop a rapport with them.  Having that rapport and trust from people is a really nice thing.  It's a comforting thing that people trust you and feel comfortable coming back to you a second time or a third time for a different problem."

With ties in Ithaca, the family will surely be back.  He and Adam will be coming in February to join Adam's Lacrosse team when they go to play in a New orleans tournament, where they will also spend two days working at a food bank.

"I've really enjoyed living in Ithaca," he says.  "I like it a lot.  I've raised two kids here.  It's a beautiful place.  There's a lot I'm going to miss.  We still have connections -- we'll be back."

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