Veterans Home in St. Clair opens doors
Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Jerry Martin
It was like a family’s long anticipated arrival of troops deployed to faraway lands. Flags waved. Welcome signs appeared. Cheers erupted. After years of planning for this day, the first two residents of the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home arrived to a hero’s welcome.
William D. Gercken of Birmingham and Peter E. McConico of Vincent, both Vietnam veterans, made history at the new home with their arrival in late November. With their arrival, they ushered in a new era for veterans’ health care at the opening of this state-of-the-art facility, which has been hailed as a model for the nation to follow.
Both were residents of Bill Nichols State Veterans Home in Alexander City and are in the first wave of residents of homes there, Bay Minette and Huntsville who were given the option of transferring to the new facility.
Their families opted for the move so they could be closer to them. “My husband looks forward to my visits,” said Gercken’s wife, Dawn. “Now that I’m only 20 minutes away, I’ll be able to visit him more often.”
Shirley McConico echoed the sentiment, noting that the proximity of Vincent to Pell City will make her travel for visits easier.
“Welcoming our first two residents to the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home is very special,” said Kim Justice, state Veterans Homes executive director. “We look forward to giving future residents the same level of respect they so rightly deserve when we welcome them ‘home.’ ”
Just weeks before, officials from across Alabama cut the ribbon to dedicate the veterans home, named in honor of the nation’s most decorated soldier and an Alabama native. He was wounded 14 times and did five tours in Vietnam.
He earned the medal of honor, presented by President Richard Nixon, for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.”
A display case of his military memorabilia begins a series of displays of all branches of service lining both sides of the corridor of the new home’s entrance way.
The corridor leads to a town center, where buildings connect to form neighborhoods that will be the homes of veterans living there. From skilled nursing to the first domiciliary in the state, this veterans home model has anything but an institutional look or feel. “It was built with the ‘wow factor’ in mind,” said state Veterans Administration Commissioner Clyde Marsh at the dedication ceremony.
Williams Blackstock was the architectural firm for the project, and Marsh noted that its design says style “from beam to beam and stern to stern.” He also thanked Doster Construction for delivering “a magnificent building. They stepped up to meet each challenge” for the state’s largest veterans home.
The size is impressive, with 240,000 square feet on 27 acres providing 254 private rooms. Eighty of those are dedicated to assisted living and Alzheimer’s and dementia care — also firsts for the state.
St. Clair Economic Development Council Executive Director Don Smith said he could talk about the economic impact, “but this isn’t about the economy. This is about the veterans.”
In 2008, he said, Pell City wasn’t even on the radar screen of plans for the new home. But a passionate group of St. Clair County officials put their plan and their plea together, making a compelling case for the campus shared by St. Vincent’s St. Clair and Jefferson State Community College. When they were through, “there wasn’t much question where it was going to be,” Smith said. And by the fall of 2012, only two words could adequately put a much-anticipated exclamation point on it: Welcome Home.
