History

VA Poplar Bluff Health Care System

Joe Merva, Executive Secretary of the Poplar Bluff Chamber of Commerce started the ball rolling in the campaign to build a Veterans Hospital in Poplar Bluff. He learned from a news dispatch in 1944 that such a hospital was proposed for the Southeast Missouri District, and immediately wired Congressman Orville Zimmerman asking that Poplar Bluff be considered. On December 5, 1945, President Harry S. Truman approved Poplar Bluff as the site for southeast Missouri’s new Veterans Administration Hospital. Ground was broken on February 18, 1948 and approximately three years later on November 25, 1950 the hospital was formally dedicated. Carl R. Gray Jr., Administrator of Veterans Affairs, delivered the address. The first patient, a farmer and WWII Veteran from Zalma Missouri, was admitted on January 8, 1951.

The original cost of the facility was $5.4 million. The hospital was built on a site covering 30 acres of ground bordering US Highway 67. In November 1983, the Poplar Bluff Veterans Council suggested naming the medical center after a famous Missourian, and recommended General John J. Pershing. Congressman Bill Emerson sponsored the bill in Congress, which became law on October 30, 1984. On June 6, 1985, the medical center was rededicated and renamed John J. Pershing VA Medical Center.