Timeline: How Holyoke’s new Veterans’ Home came from crisis to completion

HOLYOKE, MA (WGGB/WSHM) -- A newly rebuilt and renamed Veterans’ Home at Holyoke is celebrating the opening of its new facility, six years after a COVID-19 outbreak at the former Holyoke Soldiers’ Home killed veterans there.

A state report described the outbreak as the deadliest known COVID-19 outbreak at a long-term care facility in the United States. The estimated $465 million rebuild took about three years to complete.

In February 2020, the first resident at the then-Holyoke Soldiers’ Home began showing possible COVID-19 symptoms, including a high-pitched cough and a fever. Doctors ordered several chest X-rays between February and early March, but none provided clear answers.

The veteran was still able to move around the residence and spent time in the unit’s common areas despite the symptoms.

In late March 2020, nearly 230 residents were living at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home. As COVID-19 spread through the facility, the Associated Press reported that 68 veteran residents, who tested positive for the virus, died.

On June 23, 2020, the state released a 147-page independent report on the outbreak. The report was sharply critical of Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh, stating that his decisions were “utterly baffling from an infection control perspective” and likely contributed to the death toll during the outbreak.

On Sept. 25, 2020, Walsh and former Medical Director David Clinton were indicted by a grand jury on charges of criminal neglect for their roles in the outbreak.

In March 2021, a special committee on the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home held a public hearing and introduced a $400 million bond bill to build a more modern home for the state’s veterans.

In August 2021, a class-action lawsuit was filed in federal court. The lawsuit named Walsh, Clinton and three upper-level nursing managers as defendants and alleged that management put workers’ lives and health in danger.

By May 2022, the state of Massachusetts agreed to a $56 million settlement. Under the deal, families of 84 veterans who died from COVID-19 were set to receive at least $400,000 each.