VETERANS NURSIING HOME AT CAPE GIRARDEAU 8 YEARS IN THE MAKING

Cape Girardeau is a great place for a home for veterans, agree Missouri Lt. Gov. Roger Wilson and Missouri Veterans Commission Chairman Jack Matthews.

Wilson and Matthews, who attended the annual Veterans Home Flag Day Benefit Golf Tournament last summer, say the area has been a big supporter of the Missouri Veterans Home since it opened at Interstate 55 and U.S. 61 in 1990.

Care for veterans and education head the priority list of Wilson, who serves as honorary chairman of the annual golf tournament, which provides some funds to the veterans home.

The date for the 1999 Flag Day tournaments has already been set.

"It will be held on Flag Day," said Ken Lipps, volunteer services director at the veterans home. The tournament funds are used for various activities, outings for veterans and for personal items for some residents.

The Missouri Veterans Home is near its 150 capacity.

"We usually run 97 to 98 percent capacity," said Lipps. "Right now, we're at 148."

The veterans home, Eight years in the making, opened in 1990.

"I can remember when Marvin Proffer and John Dennis -- former state lawmakers -- were fighting for a veterans home during the late 1980s for the Southeast Missouri area," said Wilson recently. Wilson was a state senator at the time.

The quest for a veterans home here started in 1982 when a group of veterans organizations, county, state and national leaders first discussed the project on Memorial Day 1982.

On that day, Congressman Bill Emerson held a press conference to reveal plans and a likely timetable for construction of the nursing home, with a projected completion date of Aug. 1, 1989.

Then Cape County Presiding Commissioner Gene Huckstep was one of the driving forces behind the project locally

More than four years later, on Sept. 8, 1986, the Cape Girardeau County Commission presented the deed for a 21.34-acre tract of land, at Interstate 55 and Highway 61, to the state as the site of a the veterans nursing home.

Then Gov. John Ashcroft, who is now a U.S. senator, accepted the deed to the property. Proffer was instrumental in obtaining state funding for the project.

Construction on the $10 million project started in the spring 1987 and opened in 1990.

There has been a recent explosion of requests for veterans home space, noted Matthews. Many of the requests are from World War II and Korean conflict veterans, and some are being received now from Vietnam veterans.

Matthews has discussed the state's veterans home programs and the need for new veterans homes and national cemetery space. Missouri has six veterans homes, providing space for more than 1,200 people.

Most of the veterans homes were constructed at 200-person capacity, but the St. Louis Veterans Home has been expanded to handle 300 veterans.