VA History

Today’s VA embodies the spirit of the many Black men and women who were ground-breaking in history and continue to inspire us today. Pausing to remember their legacies and service.

75 years ago, on Jan. 3,1946, President Harry Truman signed a law establishing VHA’s predecessor, the Department of Medicine and Surgery within VA, ushering in a new era of Veteran’s health care.

Omar Bradley and doctors met the moment and ushered in sweeping changes resulting in the creation of the Department of Medicine and Surgery, the precursor to today’s Veterans Health Administration.

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz decided that, in death, he wanted to join his men at Golden Gate with a standard military funeral and regulation headstone. He took steps to assure that the shipmates closest to him during World War II could join him.

Located in Port Huron, Michigan, Lakeside Cemetery Soldiers' Lot memorializes victims of a July 1832 Asiatic cholera outbreak.

World War I marked the fourth time Congress declared war, but became the first time America instituted a draft. The "Great War" also created a new series of benefits for Veterans--some that exist in different forms today.

In 1878 Maj. George W. Ford, a "Buffalo soldier" of the reorganized Army after the Civil War, became one of the first African-Americans appointed as superintendent of a national cemetery.

Back in September, we mentioned that the oldest living female […]

One hundred and fifty years ago, on April 14, 1865, […]

  April marks both the birth and death anniversaries of […]

A look at the under-construction Jacksonville National Cemetery and the local connections and history it captures.

A VA researcher and former NASA astronaut shares her views on the VA-NASA partnership and the advances being made through current research.