New clinic dedicated to Abraham
CENTER TWP — VA Butler Healthcare's new outpatient clinic was officially dedicated to World War II veteran Abie Abraham Tuesday morning in an event that drew local, state and federal officials and focused on duty, sacrifice and honor.
Those attributes, along with a tremendous level of devotion to his fellow veterans, are the characteristics that defined Abraham's life, said speakers Rocky Bleier and U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-3rd, who both used their time at the microphone to remember the former master sergeant, who died in 2012.
Bleier said he came to know Abraham, a survivor of the Bataan Death March who would later volunteer tens of thousands of hours to helping fellow veterans during decades of service at the VA.
“He was a listening ear and a shoulder to lean on. He was an important part of Butler VA,” said Bleier, who during portions of his speech spoke directly to Abraham and reminisced about how quickly the years had gone by.
“The greatest gift of all — that's what you gave us: your time,” Bleier said. “You will always be here, we love you, good friend. God bless you.”
VA officials say that Abraham donated more than 83,000 hours of his time during many years of volunteering at Butler VA.
He was also an instrumental part of the military's efforts to identify and repatriate the remains of soldiers who died during the death march, a brutal 65-mile forced march in the Philippines from Mariveles to San Fernando orchestrated by the Japanese military after the surrender of about 75,000 American and Filipino troops in April 1942.Kelly, in his remarks, held both Abraham and the VA system up as examples of American exceptionalism and uniting forces that could help heal a politically divided nation.He thanked the assembled crowd of more than 200 for attending the ribbon-cutting event, and called on them to remember the country's commitment to members of the armed services.“You're here for the right reasons: you care,” Kelly told the crowd, which included officials from Butler and Center townships, Butler County, and state legislators.
“This facility behind us is here for one reason and one reason only. Because we care about our veterans; we're dedicated to our veterans. And we can never walk away from that commitment.”Kelly also presented Butler VA Executive Director David Cord with a copy of the federal legislation that formally named the new health clinic after Abraham. The legislation was signed into law by President Donald Trump on March 13, and is the eighth bill to receive Trump's signature.For VA officials and those tasked with constructing the center — completed about six months ahead of schedule and suffering none of the cost overruns and delays that have made other VA construction projects notorious examples of government waste and mismanagement — Tuesday was a time to celebrate a project that has typified both the VA's struggles and changes that officials believe will alter the face of VA projects across the country.Michael Adelman, the network director of the VA region which includes Butler and Pittsburgh, called the new center a “rich, collaborative environment to inspire and heal,” as well as the department's response to the changing dynamics of health care.VA officials in Butler have said the new clinic, which it is leasing for 20 years at a cost of $8.4 million per year, represents one of several ways the department is trying to modernize its operations.“I'm genuinely excited about this health center and what it means,” said Adelman. “It's a concrete example of modernization efforts in (Veterans Affairs).”T. Michael Scott, president of Cambridge Healthcare Solutions, which oversaw the construction project and owns both the facility and the land on which it sits, gave a brief nod to those struggles when he noted that the project to build a new clinic in Butler County began in October 2011, and was a “chaotic process.”Scott was speaking about all health center constructions, he said, but the Butler VA's project was delayed for years amid criminal charges and a federal investigation into developer Westar Development Corp., which ultimately had its contract with the VA terminated August 2013.Cambridge won a second round of bidding on the project, but controversy continued to swirl around the development, with Butler Township officials unhappy that the previous project site selected by Westar, Deshon Woods, had been clear-cut by construction crews but then abandoned in favor of the Herold property, where the clinic was ultimately built.
The project was also the subject of a lawsuit by a competing developer, Oxford Development, which claimed in court filings that the government had mishandled the second round of bidding for a contract valued at $127 million.To laughs from the crowd on Tuesday Scott joked that the clinic had come in “six months ahead of schedule and three years late at the same time.”But, he added, once Cambridge began the construction project in earnest, the firm in charge, Mascaro Construction, “set the standard in execution” on a project that employed a 1,500-person, all-union work force.Scott implored the veterans who will receive care to take advantage of a state-of-the-art facility that caters to men and women who all have many shared experiences — a camaraderie and understanding hard to come by in a country where only about 1 percent of the population serves in the military.“Come here, see your doctor, please,” he said. “We've worked hard to create this for you, and we need you to be a good patient. I hope you'll make this place your community.”For Cord and the men and women who will staff the new clinic, Scott had another message: the easy work is over.“It's a building. We're turning it over to you for the next step: breathing life into this facility,” he said.VA officials in Butler say the system currently enrolls more than 25,000 veterans in programs and services, and they expect that number to eclipse 30,000 sometime next year.Cord, for his part, said he wanted veterans to remember that the system's mission has remained constant despite the long and winding road to Tuesday's ribbon-cutting ceremony.He said that VA staffers would work through the Labor Day weekend to ensure that services — which will move from the system's New Castle Road campus to the new clinic starting Tuesday — will see a seamless transition to the new facility.“The path changed but they never wavered,” he said. “Our staff never wavered from their mission of caring for veterans. This is your building. This is your day.”
