Walter Reed Army hospital to close

WASHINGTON -- Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Army's flagship hospital where privates to presidents have gone for care, is closing its doors after more than a century.

Since World War I, hundreds of thousands of the nation's war wounded have received treatment at Walter Reed, including 18,000 troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Dwight Eisenhower died there. So did Gens. John J. Pershing and Douglas MacArthur. And celebrities from comedian Bob Hope to quarterback Tom Brady have stopped by to show their respect to the wounded.

The hospital was scarred by a 2007 Washington Post report about substandard living conditions in an outpatient ward and red tape faced by wounded troops there. The scandal led to improved care for all military wounded. By then, plans were moving forward to close Walter Reed's campus in Washington.

Two years earlier, a government commission, noting that Walter Reed was showing its age, voted to close the facility and consolidate its operations with the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and a hospital at Fort Belvoir, Va. The combined facility, set to open in September on the Bethesda campus, will be called the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Former and current patients and staff members will say goodbye at a ceremony Wednesday on the Washington hospital's parade grounds. Most of the moving is set for August. On Sept. 15, the Army will hand over the campus to the State Department and District of Columbia.

On the closing, Susan Eisenhower, the former president's granddaughter, said: "I know that there was a process for that decision, but we've lost a great, important part of history."

The hospital, opened in May 1909, was named for Maj. Walter Reed, an Army doctor who proved that yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes.

Marine Sgt. Rob Jones, 25, a double amputee who spends much of his days rowing, is one of more than 440 troops from the recent wars in outpatient care. He said, "I'll probably just remember the people I was working with, the staff here, how much they helped me get back on my feet."