History

Most Third Generation “Bradley era” hospitals for World War II veterans were very different from their predecessors.  In 1945 President Harry Truman charged General Omar Bradley with modernizing the Veterans Administration, which had been run by a World War I veteran, General Frank T. Hines, Jr., for over 20 years.  Truman thought the latest generation of veterans deserved a VA leader who was one of their own.  Although Bradley was a World War I veteran, too, he commanded American in troops in Europe during World War II and was intimately familiar with their needs and issues.  Bradley led one of the most notable transformations of federal veterans programs in history which resulted in a new professional Department of Medicine and Surgery, medical research and residency programs, national volunteer and canteen programs, and much more. 

As a consequence of these changes, a majority of Third Generation hospitals were constructed as high-rise buildings located in urban areas, near to medical and nursing schools, with many accommodating 1,000 patients or more.  Third Generation hospitals came to VA in several ways: military hospitals transferred from Army or Navy, land or buildings were donated by local communities, or they were designed by VA architects and built from the ground up by the Army Corps of Engineers or other contractors.   Although Bradley oversaw Congressional authorization of nearly 200 hospitals during his tenure, funding dried up in the mid-1950s, so fewer hospitals opened.  Some were cancelled or delayed.  The first new hospital authorized under General Bradley was Brooklyn, NY; the first to open (according to VA annual reports) was Tomah, WI; and the last opened in Topeka, Kansas, on August 27, 1958.

On December 3, 1945, President Truman signed an agreement to construct a 500-bed tuberculosis hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  This began a lengthy series of deliberations moving the proposed hospital site between Ann Arbor and Detroit a number of times.  The following year, the President approved a recommendation to construct a 500-bed general medical and surgical hospital for Veterans in Ann Arbor.  

The total cost was $9,756,877 for both construction and equipment!  That's about $112,454,000 adjusted for inflation. 

Construction broke ground on September 30, 1949 for the Ann Arbor Veterans Hospital, on a 16-acre parcel of land just outside the northeast city limits, between Glacier Way, Geddes Road, and Oak Way.  The hospital opened on October 12, 1953 and was dedicated on October 18.  There were 26 patients then.  Sixteen months later about 4,500 patients had passed through the doors with a hospital daily census of 285 Veterans.  Today, VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System serves about 2,500 Veterans daily in southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio, with more than 550,000 outpatient visits and nearly 5,000 hospital admissions annually under an operating budget of $650 million. 

Former Medical Center Directors

Morley B. Beckett, MD  (1953-1955)

Paul M. Ireland, MD (1955-1960)

Leon Ross, MD (1960-1965)

Arthur J. Klippen, MD  (1965-1968)

H.W. Byers (1968-1972)

Arnold E. Mouish (1972-1978)

A. Zamberlan (1979-1981)

John T. Carson (1981-1985)

Ronald F. Lipp (1985-1988)

Jule D. Moravec, PhD (1988-1990)

Edward L. Gamache (1991-1997)

James W. Roseborough (1997-2005)

Lou Ann Atkins (2006-2009)

Robert P. McDivitt (2009-2016)