My Turn: The devastating effect of dropping a wrecking ball on the VA in Leeds – The Recorder

If you ever want a straight answer, just ask a veteran.

When the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced last month its recommendation to close the VA medical center in Leeds, citing the age of its buildings and a projected decline in the number of veterans in our region, local veterans reacted with both disgust and disbelief.

I immediately went into panic mode, said Christine Hatfield, a Navy and Air Force veteran who is one of them, describing the moment when she heard the news about Leeds. This will be absolutely devastating.

Many veterans like Hatfield would be homeless if it were not for a widely renowned homelessness prevention program started years ago by the Soldier On organization through a VA partnership at Leeds where veterans can live next to and have access to VA care and services.

Closing Leeds will also mean closing a regional hub for veterans requiring care and would come at a time when the largest group of veterans today are Vietnam veterans in their 70s or older. As these veterans age they will require significantly more care and more resources. In addition to the many veterans residing in Soldier On facilities, veterans from surrounding Hilltowns and from throughout rural western Massachusetts have come to rely heavily on Leeds.

Over the years, Ive met countless veterans, many from the Vietnam era, who would tell me the VA in Leeds literally saved their life. Now they tell me they cant imagine starting all over again with new providers in the community who very likely wont understand their time in service.

What is even more inexplicable, given the irony of the VAs recommendation, is the amount of taxpayer money spent more than $50 million and counting in the last decade to modernize and upgrade buildings on the Leeds campus.

On a recent and bone chilling March morning, while veterans were talking about the news that Leeds was on a VA closure list, workers were adjusting and configuring even more scaffolding on buildings. With new parking lots being built into the hill and ongoing and multi-faceted renovations and modifications taking place throughout the sprawling 105-acre campus, few local veterans anticipated the ball being dropped on their facility.

For the residents in Soldier On, the ethereal combination of housing, health care, behavioral health and peer support on the Leeds campus cant be moved or shifted easily or certainly more efficiently elsewhere. Whats in Leeds, they say, is centrally, safely, and securely located within walking or electric wheelchair distance.

Thats important for veterans like Robert Benoit and James Oliver who have both physical and mental health disabilities that require them to get regular care and support from VA programs on a near daily basis. They have lived on the Leeds campus in Soldier On for more than a decade and say whats been built over the years at Leeds works because everything is in familial proximity. So, why they ask, should anyone bust up what works?

Its a small town up here, said Benoit. Were a family really a community of veterans who care about one another. Whether its intentional or not, closing Leeds would be making life a whole lot worse for many, many veterans.

Oliver agrees. Who knows where and what wed be doing if it were not for this place, he said. Probably living on the street or in someones basement.

Now they rely on hope and promises from area elected officials that veterans at Leeds wont be abandoned. The process to close any federal facility is lengthy, takes many steps, and will include public hearings. Elected officials say it will be years for all of this to play out, and nothing is yet final.

But they will be battling a lobbying effort started some time ago by political forces to privatize VA, to reward select people and companies with profit, and to shutter facilities just like Leeds. Its been an incremental, insidious, and underhanded movement, which culminated in congressional legislation in 2018 that mandated the infrastructure review and one that the Biden administration cant stop.

People who truly understand VA health care know that dismantling such a highly integrated system and outsourcing treatment is a terrible idea.

The private sector, already struggling to provide adequate access to care in many communities, is ill-prepared to handle the number and complexity of patients that would come from closing or downsizing VA hospitals and clinics, particularly when it involves the mental health needs of people scarred by the horrors of war, wrote Dr. David Shulkin in the New York Times after he was fired from his post as Secretary of Veterans Affairs by a tweet from President Trump.

The truth is that Leeds was built in the 1920s to provide neuropsychiatric care for veterans returning from the trenches of a world war started in Europe. It has served our region well and proudly for nearly 100 years. And veterans know better than anyone that only the dead have seen the end of war. What will the next 100 years bring us?

I am getting so sick and tired of people talking about the declining veteran population, said state Sen. John Velis at a wind-swept rally hosted last month by the Massachusetts Nurses Association to protest the Leeds announcement.

Velis, a major in the Army Reserve, a veteran of Afghanistan, and a straight shooter, was incredulous. Is anybody watching the news lately by any chance? We live in a very, very dangerous world.

John Paradis, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, lives in Florence.

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My Turn: The devastating effect of dropping a wrecking ball on the VA in Leeds - The Recorder