Walter Reed Army Medical Center ended its 102-year run with a ceremony Wednesday, retiring the Army’s official flags on the grounds of a hospital that has housed and treated the nation’s wounded warriors since World War I. “I traveled to parts of the world where no English is spoken, and they know Walter Reed,” Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker said.
In 2005, the Department of Defense’s Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommended closing the D.C. facility. More than a thousand people, including former patients and staff members, on Wednesday celebrated the near-end of a six-year relocation chiefly to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, and in part to the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Virginia.
The new Bethesda facility, now to serve the Army and Navy, will be renamed the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in an effort to continue the hospital’s legacy.
According to Schoomaker, the relocation was not a cost-cutting measure but a way to make space for “the future of military hospitals” by consolidating the two hospitals. The deadline to complete the moves is Sept. 15.
Army Secretary John McHugh said the two branches of the military are putting the longtime rivalry behind them — starting Thursday.
“Navy had the real estate,” he joked. “But I would argue that the Army’s got the people.”
The new construction cost $2.6 billion, and includes 1 million square feet of new clinical space and room to grow.
Stephen Cox, like many of Walter Reed’s more than 5,000 employees, said he has mixed feelings about the transition. As a member of the Warrior Transition Team, he will move to the Belvoir location.
“It’s been a good run,” he said. “But you’ve got to change with the times.”
Like staff and former patients, the residents surrounding the Walter Reed campus in upper Northwest also mourn the loss of their neighborhood’s central institution. E.R. Allen has lived near the hospital since 1960.
“We don’t know what we’re getting. We just hope we don’t get something with an influx of cars that the streets can’t take,” said Allen, who has lived near the hospital since 1960.
Army officials assured the crowdthat a change of address does not mean the end of the hospital’s tradition.
“The hope, the legacy, the work and the healing will continue,” McHugh said.
Still, for local residents, Allen said Wednesday’s ceremony felt like “a memorial and a wake and a funeral all rolled into one.”
