Massachusetts’ Holyoke Soldiers Home to Close in Budget Crunch; Veterans in Lurch

At 100 years old, Ethel Pierce hasn’t forgotten nursing “the boys” of World War I, sometimes filling out night reports with her feet propped up on a water pail to stop the rats from running up her legs.

Now it’s time for her government to remember, says Pierce, who like most residents of the Holyoke Soldiers Home doesn’t know where she’ll go after April 1, the date the facility is scheduled to close because of state budget cuts.

“It’s a shame,” she said. “We went (to war) and we didn’t know whether we’d get back or not.”

Leaving the Holyoke home, perched on a hilltop that overlooks the wooded Connecticut Valley, would mean losing contact with family and friends, veterans said.

“This is a lovely place,” said Pierce, who from her fourth-floor room looks out on a view many hotels would envy, a sea of dark-green pines flecked with the russets of maple as fall foliage season approached.

The cuts, part of a $310-million reduction announced by Gov. Michael S. Dukakis on Sept. 25, set closing dates for the Holyoke home, another Soldiers Home in Chelsea and several Boston shelters, including a place for homeless veterans recognized by President Bush’s “thousand points of light” program.

Since that announcement, state officials said they will keep the homes and shelters open if the Legislature approves alternative cuts.

The uncertainty hasn’t been good for veterans’ peace of mind, said Holyoke Soldiers Home Supt. Rudolph Chmura.

“You’re up high one minute and you’re down low. These people are on medical treatment, they don’t need that,” he said.

Veterans said they’re not asking for a handout.

“I wonder what the thoughts are of a recruiter today . . . if he were to tell that (recruit), ‘I am sorry, but by the time you’re 65 you’ll have to find your own way, so be careful,’ ” said 75-year-old John Landers, who lost both legs as a result of injuries he suffered when a tank caught fire.

David Joyce, 80, and a member of Holyoke’s Board of Trustees who is staying temporarily at the facility for medical treatment, called the closing an “absolute disgrace” and said he doubts that putting residents in a nursing home will save the state any money.

The state has always owned and operated the Holyoke home. Many of its 245 residents would end up in nursing homes, where the state would still be responsible for half of the cost of their care through the Medicaid program.

“My wife’s in a nursing home that costs $110 a day. I figure at the end of a year our resources and whatever else we had will be gone, maybe,” he said.

Chelsea veterans were equally dismayed to hear of the closing date, which would displace 450 people, said Paul McNamara, assistant superintendent.

Dukakis has said he had no choice but to make the cuts because he has the power to withhold money only from executive agencies. He said he will ask the Legislature, the courts and the constitutional officers to make further cuts in their budgets, which would free $13 million for human service programs, including the $5 million needed to keep the soldiers homes open.

State officials denied that veterans are pawns in a political power play.

“It’s unfortunately the nature of reality,” said Dukakis spokesman Steve Crawford. “Over the last 14 months we’ve cut $100 million a month from the state budget.”

Meanwhile, the veterans wait.

Pierce, her face furrowed by the lines of a century, set her chin resolutely at the thought of leaving the Holyoke home where she has lived for 14 years.

Her eyes, magnified by thick glasses, flickered with mischief as she recalled the days of 1917 when she dodged the wrath of a supervisor--”Lord knows what war she was in before”--and joked with the British soldiers sent to her field hospital in France.

“I said I’d go wherever necessary with ‘the boys,’ ” she said. “We didn’t know whether we’d be bombed or not, but we went just the same.”