Over 200 Attend Ribbon Cutting for New VA Clinic

by Sid Riley

Area Veterans will no longer have to travel to Dothan or to Tallahassee in order to utilize their VA medical benefits. After years of work by numerous people, the VA has come to Marianna. Welcome!

A crowd of over three hundred local citizens were at the new clinic facility on Tuesday morning to witness the formal ribbon cutting ceremony for the new clinic. The usual adornment of area beauty queens were on site to add to the festivities.

The new clinic is located in the newly renovated building located on Highway 90 East, where
Marianna Medical Center was previously located. The clinic will provide a wide range of services to qualified veterans. The ribbon cutting ceremony was hosted by the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, with Congressman Alan Boyd the featured speaker. Officials from the Veterans Administration were also in attendance.

The new clinic is part of an ongoing program to eventually have a clinic available within a fifty mile radius for most of the nations veterans. The staffing of the new Marianna clinic has not yet been completed, with routine services expected to begin within the next four weeks. Initially the clinic will be taking only new enrollees into the VA system, but by the end of the summer some 1400 veterans now enrolled in the Tallahassee clinic will be transferred here.

Congressman Boyd was especially proud of the acquisition of the new clinic for our area. “It is appropriate that we stand up for our veterans by providing this service….since they once stood up for us all”, he quoted.