Featured Stories

The present-day Bob Stump VA Medical Center campus in Prescott, Arizona has had a long and interesting history from the time the Arizona Territory was created in 1863. Established as Fort Whipple, the facility transitioned over many years to an eventual VA Medical Center campus.

In November 1946, a brief article appeared in the Birmingham Star Gazette with an accompanying photo. Patients from the Birmingham VA Medical Center in Van Nuys, California beat the team of doctors they were playing in the first game of wheelchair basketball by a score of 16-6.

After a night raid by German forces on Nov. 2, 1917, a group of U.S. soldiers became the first group taken prisoner in WWI. These POWs included Sgt. Edgar Halyburton and Pvt. Clyde Grimsley, and each suffered the privations that occurred in early 20th Century imprisonment.

As another Thanksgiving is upon us, thoughts turn towards the traditions that surround the holiday, many of them involving food. At the National VA History Center Archives, staff members went looking to see what past Thanksgivings looked like and were rewarded with positive results.

On September 1, 1973, the Veterans Administration (VA) became the steward of 103 national cemeteries, 22 soldiers’ and government lots in private cemeteries, 7 Confederate cemeteries, and 3 monument sites with the absorption of the National Cemetery System. It also took responsibility for the procurement of government headstones and markers for eligible veterans. VA was now in the cemetery service.

Katherine Stinson was an early aviation pioneer, becoming the fourth woman to receive a pilot license in the nation. Her flying career took her to the doorsteps of World War I and back.

Soon after World War II concluded, Gen. Omar Bradley, fresh off relinquishng command of the U.S. Army's Twelfth Army Group, was given a critical mission back stateside - take charge of the Veterans Adminsitration and prepare to support the millions of Veterans coming back home.

After the Civil War concluded, the Veteran service organization Grand Army of the Republic commissioned multiple stained glass windows that were early powered light displays. Two survive today at VAs in Leavenworth, Kansas and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Dr. Andrew Schally was born in Poland, and through early struggles under German occupation during World War II, started a journey as a medical researcher that would take him to VA and groundbreaking research on hormones. In this feature by VA History intern Parker Beverly, follow along Dr. Schally's career as his medical research was recognized in 1977 with the Nobel Prize.

How did Veterans from the Civil War celebrate their country's Independence Day in 1875? In a feature that appeared last year on the VA Insider digital platform, a unique perspective is gained in a late 19th Century July 4th celebration.

In 1945, as World War II was ending, the U.S. cruiser USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine, igniting a quest for survival for the hundreds of sailors stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Today, only a few of those survivors remain, and National Cemetery Administration Historian Richard Hulver memorializes some of those Veterans, who are buried at national cemeteries across the world.

Florence Standish was a nurse who worked on the historic Asheville VA Medical Center campus in the early 20th Century when the Army maintained the hospital. A photo found by a local VA employee began a journey that helped identify this pioneering nurse.