Hal, I found out something about Vet Centers in Middle Tennessee. As you know, there are only four centers: Johnson City, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Memphis. Three in East Tennessee and one in West Tennessee, leaving a huge area of no access for about half the state. According to Dick, my counselor when Vet Centers were being proposed it was kind of like the reception Methadone Centers get. Images of half-crazed bearded, dirty Vietnam vets flashed across some peoples minds and the Middle Tennessee congressmen kept them out. Our own Congressman Jimmy "Friend of the Vet" Quillen lived in Kingsport twenty miles away and he refused to let one be established in his back yard. That is why the Johnson City Vet Center is about 1/4 mile from Mountain Home VA Center.
__________________
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams
|