Goering used to ask his young guard to bring him cups of water, which Mr. DiPalma recalled Goering as arrogant and uncooperative, often berating him in rapid-fire German. In his memoir, “Just a Kid, A Guard at the Nuremberg Trials,” Mr. There was Emilio DiPalma, a retired crane operator, who died of the coronavirus on April 8. Paul Dever, who had fought in the war himself, dedicated the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, promising to protect injured veterans from what he called “the scissors of false economy.”įifteen thousand people lined the streets for that day’s parade, and the facility - built on a hill and illuminated with floodlights - became a source of great pride in this part of the state. And they were damaged: shellshocked, learning to live without limbs, unable to communicate what they had seen.
In 1952, young men were returning to the industrial towns of western Massachusetts after serving in World War II. “When you vote to shrink government, it has ramifications.” They each had stories “All these regular Massachusetts folks that are now outraged, I don’t disagree, but veterans’ programs require funding,” she said. The facility’s previous superintendent stepped down in 2015, declaring that the home could not safely care for the population on the existing budget. Even so, there were persistent shortfalls in staffing, and the local unions complained that workers were frequently pressured to stay for unplanned double shifts. The facility’s budget increased by 14 percent over the last five years, according to a spokesman for the state’s health department. The facility’s superintendent, Bennett Walsh, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel with no nursing home experience, was placed on administrative leave on March 30.īut many in the state are revisiting decisions made since 2015, when a moderate, technocratic Republican governor, Charlie Baker, was elected on a promise to rein in spending. Multiple investigations have been opened, several of which seek to determine whether state officials should be charged with negligence under civil or criminal law. It is one of the highest death tolls of any end-of-life facility in the country. Almost three-quarters of the veterans inside were infected. Of the 210 veterans who were living in the facility in late March, 89 are now dead, 74 having tested positive for the virus. With scarce protective gear and a shortage of staff, the facility’s administrators combined wards of infected and uninfected men, and the virus spread quickly through a fragile population. The question of what went wrong at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home will be with Massachusetts for a long time.