VA Watchdog dot Org - VA NEWS FLASH

VA NEWS FLASH from Larry Scott at VA Watchdog dot Org -- 04-17-2006 #6

VETERANS HOPE TO SAVE MONTROSE, NEW YORK VA HOSPITAL --

VA SECRETARY NICHOLSON MAY HAVE OTHER PLANS

We have two stories.

First story here... http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060417/NEWS02/604170326/1020/NEWS04

First story below:

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Veterans hope to save Montrose VA hospital

By BRIAN J. HOWARD
bjhoward@lohud.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS

MONTROSE — Bill Grzybowski spent many sleepless nights reliving the memory of one fateful day in 1982.

He and his fellow Marines were resting in a field of tall grass at midday, weary from loading cargo onto aircraft, when an out-of-control forklift cut across the field toward him and struck and killed the man beside him.

For Grzybowski, a resident of the Montrose veterans hospital's post-traumatic stress disorder unit, reliving that day is part of his recovery. Art therapy — sculpting, in particular — lets him think about something else for a while.

"They want you to relive it, and it was hard enough to get through it the first time," he said, staring blankly at the clay forms that have been his emotional outlet. "I was kind of in a shell inside. I wanted to explain that I was terrified. This kept my attention."

The FDR Campus of the VA Hudson Valley Healthcare System, as it is officially known, is different things to different veterans: a place for routine medical care, a place to grow old, even a place to rebuild a broken life.

To the Department of Veterans Affairs, though, it is a costly, underused facility like many across the country, a virtual city with its own police and fire stations, a sewage treatment plant, a boiler plant, water towers, a chapel and a child-care center.

A consortium, Montrose Elders, is waiting for approval to redevelop 11 buildings on the FDR Campus. That plan though, is on hold.

Since opening in 1950, the hospital has shrunk: from 1,984 beds to 1,400 by the 1980s, to 291 today.

Through its Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services, or CARES, Veterans Affairs intends to drastically downsize at Montrose, merging most of the programs and services there with its sister hospital at Castle Point in Fishkill, Dutchess County.

In his 2004 CARES decision, then-VA Secretary Anthony Principi wrote that such large, mostly vacant facilities required the federal agency to spend money appropriated for veterans on maintenance of buildings and grounds.

"VA can no longer afford to misuse scarce resources in this manner," Principi wrote.

Carrying out that decision, a federal panel in September endorsed moving Montrose's nursing home beds and inpatient psychiatric services to Castle Point, and building new facilities at Montrose for residential care and outpatient clinics.

Veterans groups and elected officials at all levels have protested any cuts in services at Montrose.

Dan Griffin, executive director of the Westchester County chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, expects all 50 buildings at Montrose to eventually be leveled, replaced with high-end housing beyond most veterans' reach.

But what about all the soldiers returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, Griffin asks, many physically or emotionally scarred by the ravages of modern war?

"That's another reason to say, 'Wait a minute,' with the CARES commission, hold on shutting down these veterans hospitals," he said. "We've got a lot of veterans coming back and a lot of wounded who are going to need the VA."

Hospital spokeswoman Nancy Winter said the CARES process is on hold until the current VA secretary, James Nicholson, announces a final decision.

Meanwhile, life goes on for scores of veterans who rely on the hospital for treatment, rehabilitation and vocational services, some of them only vaguely aware of the turmoil surrounding its future.

Veterans like Grzybowski and Keith Vinston Ray, who go to art therapist Melissa Mazzio's studio, have seen so much destruction. Here they can express themselves, even take a few chances.

"As they build their artworks, they build their self-esteem," Mazzio said. " 'Taking a chance' for a lot of veterans has meant failure, because it has been for them."

For Ray, 51, painting is a religious experience, like going to church. His first painting after arriving at Montrose's post-traumatic stress disorder unit in July was of Jesus, "because I need him in my life."

"I never painted for money," Ray said. "I just did it. I never realized it could be therapeutic."

Art therapy is one aspect of the therapeutic recreation services that Montrose provides in its traumatic-stress and substance-abuse units, and in the domiciliary and the psychiatric and geriatric care units.

A person struggling with addiction can learn to manage stress through recreation, said Julie Anderson, director of recreational therapy. Even games that are not therapeutic teach socialization.

Montrose's Supportive Housing program, meanwhile, helps homeless veterans find subsidized housing, often in one of the 14 two-bedroom apartments in Peekskill run by the Lexington Center for Recovery in Valhalla.

Affordable housing in Westchester is scarce, but the VA has found ample partners, including Lexington Center and the Valhalla-based Westhab Inc., said Betty Gilmore, manager of behavioral health and rehabilitation.

"The reason isn't great, but the fact is that there's so much attention to veterans again because of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts that people are really interested now in helping veterans," she said.

What's more, Montrose is one of 23 VA sites nationally that are developing supported-employment programs that put veterans directly to work without fear of losing benefits. Employers include gas stations, building contractors and retail stores. Since September, 11 of the 28 veterans in the Montrose program have graduated.

"Employment is not the result of the therapy. Employment is part of the therapy," said Marek Bienkowski, supervisor of Veterans Industries at Montrose.

Whether such programs or even basic outpatient care will continue at Montrose is unclear.

That worries Anthony Grasso of Yorktown, an Army veteran who goes for checkups there every few months as he recovers from heart bypass surgery. At 79, the prospect of traveling to Castle Point or the Bronx is daunting.

"George Washington said the world will know you by the way you take care of your veterans," Grasso said. "I'm born and raised in Westchester County. I think these services should stay in Westchester County."

Historical note:

Boscobel connection

The Montrose VA campus was once home to Boscobel, a 19th-century neoclassical mansion that today stands 15 miles upriver from where it was built.

Boscobel, which means "beautiful woods" in Italian, was built at Haverstraw Bay between 1804 and 1808 by States Morris Dyckman, a British loyalist of Dutch descent who traced his roots to the New Amsterdam colony. Dyckman was said to have received today's equivalent of $7 million for testifying in an English court in defense of British quartermasters accused of profiteering during the American Revolution.

Dyckman died in 1806, never having lived in the house. His widow finished it, and family members lived there as late as 1888. In 1955, five years after the VA hospital opened, the house was auctioned off for $35 to a demolition contractor and dismantled.

Its carved pediments, pilasters and cornices had been removed by the housewrecker and trucked to Long Island before a rescue group stepped in. Funds were raised to buy 45 acres in Philipstown and to dismantle the remaining structure.

Fragments of the house sat in storage until Lila Acheson Wallace, founder of Reader's Digest, gave more than $300,000 for the reconstruction and furnishing of the mansion on its new site. Boscobel opened to the public in May 1961.

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Second story here... http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060417/NEWS02/604170327/1027/NEWS11

Second story below:

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Developer, Cortlandt both have stake in FDR hospital campus

By BRIAN J. HOWARD
bjhoward@lohud.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS

Even before CARES, the Department of Veterans Affairs recognized that many of its hospitals were hemorrhaging red ink.

In 2000, the VA solicited proposals to redevelop 11 buildings on 60 acres at the FDR Campus in Montrose. Cortlandt paid Ernst & Young $111,000 to make its pitch, but lost out to a consortium called Montrose Elders.

Though the VA has put the process on hold, Montrose Elders still meets monthly at the campus, holding out hope for its plan to build senior housing, assisted living and nursing care for veterans and others.

Partners Ginsburg Development and the Jewish Home for the Aged pulled out after the VA delayed the project, said John Dodson, a developer and Vietnam War veteran who leads the consortium.

Others, however, have been lined up, and the group awaits only the VA's approval to break ground. Two Montrose Elders board members have died while waiting for that approval.

Still, Dodson maintains that his winning bid and signed agreement with the VA remain binding.

"If the secretary of the VA would sign the lease, we could get started in two weeks," he said. "The complication is Cortlandt, who competed with us originally."

Dodson wants to join forces with the town, but instead worries that Cortlandt has forged ahead on its own, enlisting the support of Rep. Sue Kelly, R-Katonah, one of his early backers. Kelly declined to comment on Montrose Elders, saying only that she had made her position clear to Dodson.

Cortlandt remains intent on persuading the VA to share facilities that it no longer needs, such as the campus' sewage plant, theater and swimming pool. The town spent $20,000 last year to evaluate those facilities and, in February, formally requested that the VA turn over its riverfront to the state and its perimeter road to the town.

That would solve the problem of a dozen nearby homeowners who have used the road to get in and out of their neighborhood since a bridge that crosses the train tracks was condemned in 2001.

Cortlandt Councilman Joseph Cerreto, a former liaison to Dodson's board, spent 10 months in Iraq in 2003 as a lieutenant colonel with the Army Reserve. He said none of the town's proposals conflicts with the recommendations of the VA's Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services, or CARES. But becoming an official partner with Montrose Elders would put the town at the mercy of the CARES timetable, he said.

"The town doesn't want to wait for CARES," Cerreto said. "We're not challenging what they (the VA) want to do."

For now, though, it seems both Cortlandt and Montrose Elders will have to wait until VA Secretary Richard Nicholson rules on the hospital's future. No timetable for a decision is set.

Until then, town Supervisor Linda Puglisi said, the two sides are not at odds.

"We're trying to get the VA to make a decision," she said.

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Larry Scott

(go back to VA Watchdog dot Org Home Page)

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