Page 33 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2018- Online Magazine

VA SUPER CLINIC – The Lubbock VA Super Clinic is well What a blessing the new VA Clinic will be for our
underway for selection of the winning proposal for award and for Veterans, their families and the Lubbock community!
beginning construction! The Super Clinic will be located on the The construction will take approximately eighteen
north side of 4th Street and west of Indiana - shown on the map as months and is scheduled to be completed in 2020.
Site No. 3. I will not go into detail as to how this all works but only The new clinic will have approximately 110,000-
provide an overview. 120,000 gross square feet of space, including
circulation for hallways, elevators, and access
space. The net space, not including circulation, is
approximately 94,000 square feet. That is more than
four times the size of the current facility. The Clinic
is planned to have 635 parking spaces to serve our
Veterans and staff. The new VA Super Clinic will
have a nice Canteen to support the Veterans and
families and will be similar to a small PX/BX with
food and other items for purchase.
There will also be a bus stop at the new Clinic
location, and the Committee and other Veteran
Organizations have expressed a desire to ask for
free bus service for Veterans on the Public Bus
Transportation System to the new VA Super Clinic. I
understand that there will also be a light at the area
to allow for crossing and to control traffic.
Thank you

Gary G. Harber
General Brigadier General, Retired
United States Army

UPDATE

The General Officer Executive Subcommittee of the flexibility to use “about” a 100-mile radius, including
Veterans Rural Health Committee would like to see the Amarillo and Midland/Odessa and the 10,300 Eastern New
Veterans Administration put a National Cemetery in the Mexico veterans, we can qualify. One hundred miles is not
Lubbock area for the veterans of West Texas and Eastern a long distance in West Texas and is much better than 300
New Mexico. Lubbock is 300 miles from a National miles.
Veterans Cemetery. Amarillo and Midland/Odessa are Arlington National Cemetery has 400,000 graves of
also 300 miles from one. Lubbock is the center of all of the U.S. veterans and 11 countries, as well as Presidents, and
unserved area, as shown in the attached map of veteran it does not require that they die within 75 miles of the
cemeteries in the United States. The V.A.’s strategic goal cemetery. Neither does any other veterans’ cemetery.
is to provide burial for 96% of veterans within 75 miles of
their homes, but in 2016, 553,000 American veterans died, Thank you
and only 20% were buried in national or state veteran
cemeteries.
The V.A. National Cemetery Administration requires William Edgar Murphy
an applicant to have 80,000 veterans in a 75-mile radius Major General, Retired
of the proposed veteran cemetery. Neither Lubbock nor United States Army
Amarillo nor Midland/Odessa can satisfy this requirement.
With Lubbock in the center, if the V.A. will allow us

Lubbock Senior Link 33