Our nation recently commemorated America’s 250th anniversary and we at WDVA are also celebrating a milestone much closer to home: WDVA’s 50 years of dedicated service. This moment offers us a chance to reflect on how our agency’s half‑century of work fits into a much larger tradition of supporting Veterans, one that stretches back to the earliest days of our country. Across the state, many of our locations are marking this anniversary with employee recognition events and other celebrations, each highlighting the people who keep our mission alive every day.

Our mission of Serving Those Who Served has been a facet of state service since the establishment of the Washington Soldiers Home and Colony in 1891 and the Washington Veterans Home in 1910. It would take another 85 years before our modern agency would be created, however. WDVA began in 1976 when Senate Bill No. 2006 pulled staff from the Department of Social and Health Services to focus on Veterans’ needs. The bill was overwhelmingly supported by the legislature, going so far as to override a veto by Governor Dan Evans.

At the turn of the 20^th century, estimates from census records suggest the state had around 7,000 Civil War Veterans, largely from the Union. By 1905, the number had climbed to more than 15,000. Today, there are more than 494,000 Veterans living, working, and thriving in Washington.

The agency has expanded, too, both in capacity and workforce. That initial Senate Bill called for only a handful of leadership positions and a “confidential secretary” in addition to the superintendents of the existing Homes. Now we employ nearly 1,000 people across the state in our four Homes – the Spokane Veterans Home was added in 2001, and the Walla Walla Veterans Home began welcoming Residents in 2017 – and the Central Office, as well as on base at JBLM, in Seattle and Pierce County, Central and Eastern Washington, and at our State Veterans Cemetery in Medical Lake. Our current programs assist Veterans and their loved ones with everything from claims assistance to business certification, to counseling connections, to housing at our two Transitional Housing Program sites. As the needs of our Veterans change, so do our programs with the inclusion of Suicide Prevention, Veterans Conservation, connection to military installations and their families, and multiple others.

How long does it take for something to become tradition? Is it 10 years? Twenty-five? Fifty years? Is it a century of constant service, respect, and honor? At this point, 50 years after the establishment of our agency and more than 100 years after Washington codified taking care of our Veterans as an official priority, what we do every day as agency staff is a steadfast ideal of state service and part of the core of what it means to be a Washington State employee.

We are proud of the work we do every day to improve the lives of Washington’s Veterans, just as we are proud of the agency we’ve built and the legacy we maintain. We will continue to fight for a better future for Veterans and their families!

-WDVA Director, David Puente Jr. 

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.