Warbird Information Exchange

Wow, seems hard to believe that Walter Reed will be closing. My dad was stationed there from '76 - '80.




(07-23) 06:13 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --
Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Army's flagship hospital where
privates to presidents have gone for care, is closing its doors after more
than a century.
Hundreds of thousands of the nation's war wounded from World War I to
today have received treatment at Walter Reed, including 18,000 troops who
served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
President Dwight Eisenhower died there. So did Gens. John J. Pershing and
Douglas MacArthur.
It's where countless celebrities, from Bob Hope to quarterback Tom Brady,
have stopped to show their respect to the wounded. Through the use of
medical diplomacy, the center also has tended to foreign leaders.
The storied hospital, which opened in 1909, was scarred by a 2007 scandal
about substandard living conditions on its grounds for wounded troops in
outpatient care and the red tape they faced. It led to improved care for
the wounded, at Walter Reed and throughout the military. By then, however,
plans were moving forward to close Walter Reed's campus.
Two years earlier, a government commission, noting that Walter Reed was
showing its age, voted to close the facility and consolidate its
operations with the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and a
hospital at Fort Belvoir, Va., to save money.
Former and current patients and staff members will say goodbye at a
ceremony Wednesday on the parade grounds in front of the main concrete and
glass hospital complex. Most of the moving will occur in August. On Sept.
15, the Army hands over the campus to the new tenants: the State
Department and the District of Columbia. The buildings on campus deemed
national historic landmarks will be preserved; others probably will be
torn down. The city is expected to develop its section for retail and
other uses.


The full article here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 710D23.DTL