History of VA in 100 Objects

On July 21, 1905, one of the USS Bennington's boilers exploded, killing 49 sailors. Almost immediately after the accident, surviving crew and fellow sailors donated funds to build a monument at the grave site for their fallen comrades. This burial ground would later become Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.

When the GI Bill became law in 1944, it included a home loan program for Veterans. After several changes to update the law to reflect current market prices and challenges, one area still needed addressed: support for Veterans who were dependent on wheelchairs for mobility. The answer was the Specially Adapted Housing program, and one of the earliest homes built with the grant money was designed by acclaimed builder Frank Lloyd Wright.

Graves of unknown soldiers in the national cemeteries are commonplace and marked in many different ways. While the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Army’s Arlington National Cemetery is the most culturally recognizable unknown grave, VA national cemeteries also have less grand examples of unknown burials that span the early 19th century through the Korean War. The most common form of unknown marker, however, is the simple 6x6-inch stone that adorns the graves of thousands of Civil War soldiers.

U.S. participation in the First World War produced a shift away from relying on long-term institutional care for Veterans in need to a model of Veteran welfare centered around short-term hospitalization. During the war, the War Department assumed responsibility for tending to the sick and wounded. Afterwards, when the Army dismantled its hospital system, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) stepped in to fill the breach, acquiring numerous facilities the Army and Navy no longer wanted as well as other properties that could be used for medical purposes.

The North’s victory in the Civil War came at an enormous cost to the more than two million men who fought for the Union cause. Over 350,000 lost their lives due to battle or disease. Almost as many were wounded in action. According to Northern medical records, Union surgeons performed just under 30,000 amputations during the war. For these disabled Union Veterans, Congress made provisions to provide monetary compensation. In July 1861, lawmakers hastily passed a law for Union recruits making them eligible for the same pension allowances as soldiers in the Regular Army. Later in 1862, for the first time, a pension law explicitly granted benefits not just for men wounded in battle but also to those suffering from “disease contracted while in the service of the United States.”

While suicide takes a toll on lives in every segment of society, Veterans in the post 9-11 era have statistically been more at risk than adults in the general population. VA’s efforts to combat the scourge of Veteran suicide owe a significant debt to the foundational research studies conducted by two VA psychologists in the 1950s. The work of Drs. Edwin S. Shneidman and Norman J. Farberow led to some of the earliest crisis intervention programs at VA and elsewhere and the establishment of the nation’s first dedicated Suicide Prevention Center in Los Angeles, California.

The U.S. Army’s plan for the recovery of Union dead across the South after the Civil War came about through the labors of a remarkable if little known officer, Edmund Whitman. He spent four years overseeing the collection of thousands of remains and creating “mortuary records” of reburials in new national cemeteries. After completing his “Harvest of Death,” to use his phrase, he produced in 1869 an extraordinary report that recounted the breadth, sequence, and challenges of his reinternment mission.

The Congressional Medal of Honor is the nation’s highest decoration for valor in the military. More than 1,000 have been awarded, and 98 of those recipients worked at VA. A wall display outside VA's Under Secretary for Benefits in Washington, D.C. pays tribute to each of those individuals, whose stories are tied to the legacy of Veterans serving Veterans.

In 2019, VA’s National Cemetery Administration (NCA) launched  the Veterans Legacy Memorial (VLM), an innovative, interactive web site with memorial pages for more than 4.5 million Veterans. VLM utilizes the millions of records contained within NCA’s Burial Operations Support System database. Each Veteran’s memorial page is populated with information about his or her military service and place of burial.

Congressional Cemetery occupies 35 acres of land in the southeast section of Washington, DC, and has served as the final resting place for scores of elected officials and notable Washingtonians. The more than 60,000 gravesites include 806 maintained by VA. Some 168 of the VA sites are adorned with one of the most distinctive markers to be found in the cemetery—the iconic cenotaphs designed by Benjamin H. Latrobe, the nation’s first professional architect.

In August 1945, the United States detonated atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World War II and ushering in the dawn of the Atomic Age. Two years later, the Veterans Administrations started harnessing this technology for a very different purpose—to conduct medical research by installing a small nuclear reactor at the VA hospital in Omaha, Nebraska.

The creation of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942 allowed women for the first time to serve with the Army in non-nursing roles. Life Magazine reported on the first group of WAAC officer candidates and auxiliaries going through training in a lengthy photo essay that highlighted the women's professionalism and patriotism.