Few answers as veterans rally in Stamford to save VA clinic from possible closure

CT Examiner – Thursday, July 31, 2025
By Angela Carella

STAMFORD – Ralph DelVecchio served in southeast Asia with the Army from 1965 to 1968, when the Vietnam war was raging.

He was hunting Viet Cong soldiers, laying mines, and transporting supplies through jungles. He once had the unimaginable duty of processing the bodies of fallen comrades.

But DelVecchio, who’s about to turn 79, has more fight in him.

On Wednesday he wore a T-shirt to city hall showing silhouettes of soldiers in uniform, with the words, “We don’t know them all, but we owe them all.”

DelVecchio wore the shirt to what he thought would be a meeting of veterans with representatives of the mayor’s office and members of Congress.

But DelVecchio and other veterans were not allowed up to the 10th floor, where the meeting took place. Instead they milled around the city hall lobby, waiting to hear results of the upstairs discussion about the possible closing of the Stamford VA medical clinic on Summer Street.

DelVecchio has sought treatment there for 10 years. The VA deemed his health issues 100 percent service-related, and DelVecchio knows the clinic staff well.

“They are like family,” he said.

Once in a while he has an appointment at the state’s only VA hospital in West Haven. Because of his disability rating, the VA covers the cost of a taxi ride from his home in Stamford to the West Haven Medical Center, DelVecchio said.

“There’s a small waiting room; I see my brother veterans there,” DelVecchio said. “A lot are in wheelchairs or they have canes. They don’t get taxi rides like me. They have to get someone to drive them. They’ll have to do that a lot more if the VA closes the Stamford clinic.”

He worries about his brother veterans seeking and obtaining physical and mental health care.

Vague answers

To that end, the VA established a nationwide network of Community-Based Outpatient Clinics, or CBOCs, that provide close-to-home primary care and specialty services, including preventive care, laboratory work, refilling prescriptions, and mental health treatment.

The CBOC at 1275 Summer St. opened about 20 years ago.

It’s invaluable to veterans from Stamford and surrounding towns, said John Johnson of Stamford, who served in the Navy during the Vietnam war. Getting places is a big deal for many veterans, Johnson said.

“I take a couple of guys for haircuts. If they have a wheelchair or a walker, it’s tough getting them in the car,” Johnson said. “What the VA is trying to do is wrong, and they never said anything to veterans” about closing the Stamford clinic.

The lack of information from the VA was the main topic of discussion on the 10th floor, where Stamford Mayor Caroline Simmons met with Carmen Hughes, who oversees the Stamford Veterans Resource Center; veterans’ advocates; and Dan Reilly, veterans and military affairs outreach liaison for Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Greenwich, a Marine Corps veteran.

The city will work to keep the Stamford clinic open, Simmons said. Her staff has scheduled a meeting next week with Dr. Becky Rhoads, executive director of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, Simmons said.

It’s not clear whether it’s up to Rhoads to decide whether the Stamford clinic will close, Reilly said. Veterans’ advocates said they think the decision will be made by Rhoads’ boss, Ryan Lilly, director of the Veterans Integrated Service Network for Region 1, the six New England states.

“Our understanding is that no official decision has been made, and Rhoads is the contact,” Reilly told the group assembled in the mayor’s conference room. “We’re learning as we go.”

Hughes said not knowing the fate of the Stamford clinic has created great anxiety among veterans, who report that clinic staff told them they cannot make medical appointments after September.

“The Veterans Resource Center gets calls on a regular basis for transportation to the CBOC in Stamford. How are they going to get to a clinic that’s farther away?” Hughes said. “Many of them don’t have the financial means to do it on their own. This would create a lot of hardship.”

Issue with clinic not identified

The city is not getting answers from the VA about why the Stamford clinic is targeted for possible closure, Hughes said. CT Examiner contacted other CBOCs in the state; none said they’d heard they might close.

“We’re looking to see if we can find another place for a clinic in Stamford, but it’s hard to solve the problem when you don’t know the problem,” Hughes said.

It’s not known whether the situation in Stamford is tied to President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, initiative.

Earlier this year the Trump administration announced plans to cut more than 70,000 VA jobs, a departmentwide reduction of 15 percent. But Pete Kasperowicz, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, said the administration backed off that reduction in July.

“There is no longer any plan to lay off anyone at VA,” Kasperowicz said in an email.

The new plan is to “reduce total VA staff by nearly 30,000 employees by the end of fiscal year 2025,” according to a VA statement. The reduction will happen by “employee reductions through the federal hiring freeze, deferred resignations, retirements and normal attrition,” the statement reads.

DOGE cut nearly 17,000 of 484,000 VA employees between January and June. By Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, “the department expects nearly 12,000 additional VA employees to exit through normal attrition, voluntary early retirement authority or the deferred resignation program,” according to the statement.

So VA staff will be cut by nearly 30,000 employees instead of the 70,000 originally planned. “VA has multiple safeguards in place to ensure these staff reductions do not impact veteran care or benefits,” the statement says.

Asked whether the VA is implementing other cost-cutting measures that could result in closing the Stamford CBOC, Kasperowicz did not respond.

Nick Savaria, community relations specialist with the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, told CT Examiner the Stamford clinic “remains open.” Asked whether that means it will not close, Savaria did not respond.

A failure to communicate

“There’s been a surprising lack of communication from the VA,” Tom Patterson, an Army veteran and volunteer at the Stamford Veterans Resource Center, said during the meeting in the mayor’s conference room. “To create this uncertainty for veterans … is disgraceful.”

Dr. Al Fusco of Stamford, who served in the Army and advocates for veterans, said the VA is leaving them in limbo.

“They were using the Stamford clinic. Now they’re saying, ‘Where do I go? What am I going to have to do?’” Fusco said. “We need solid information.”

Steve Fischer, commander of the Stamford Veterans Council, asked whether anyone in the mayor’s meeting had a sense of where Rhoads, director of the VA’s Connecticut system, stands on closing the Stamford clinic.

“The communication I’ve had with her is nebulous,” Fischer said. “I don’t get a full answer.”

The others said the same.

Fischer cited a recent announcement from the U.S. Department of Defense that the military has met or exceeded its recruitment goals for this year.

The young people signing up “have an understanding when they join – you are promising to take care of me when I get out,” Fischer said. “How does it look to them to close a CBOC” in a city like Stamford, which has 3,500 veterans, plus those in surrounding towns who use the clinic.

The clinic is a “welcoming place,” fulfilling the VA’s goal for CBOCs – to provide medical care close to where veterans live, said Pat Buzzeo, commander of the Stamford chapter of Disabled American Veterans.

“It’s not a five-minute exam there. They sit with you and talk with you,” Buzzeo said. “This CBOC was started because we wanted our World War II veterans to have a place to go nearby. Now the Vietnam veterans are getting up in age and need a place to go.”

What Stamford CBOC?

Advocates say the clinic serves 1,500 veterans a year, but the number would be higher if the VA put out the word that Stamford has a CBOC, said Tom Finn, an Army veteran and volunteer at the Stamford Veterans Resource Center.

“I met a guy who said he’s been going up to West Haven for 30 years. He never knew there was a CBOC office in Stamford,” Finn said. “We know that every CBOC office has an outreach budget, but there is a lack of outreach in our part of the state. The fact is Stamford is a hot zone for veterans.”

Laverna McDonald of Stamford, who served in the Army for 42 years before retiring two years ago, said she’s been driving to West Haven for medical care, and learned about the Stamford clinic after visiting the Veterans Resource Center in Old Town Hall.

“That’s how you find out about things,” McDonald said. “It’s all word of mouth.”

Commander Richard Olson of American Legion Post 12 in Norwalk said the Stamford VA clinic is crucial for veterans throughout traffic-clogged lower Fairfield County.

“I’m afraid that, if they shut it down, we’ll never get it back,” said Olson, who lives in Stamford. “The drive to West Haven is not pretty. A lot of veterans can’t do it.”

It’s also difficult to find a ride through one of the agencies that serve veterans, McDonald said.

“You can be on the phone for hours,” she said.

Trusting the VA ‘really hard’

Patterson of the Veterans Resource Center said the meeting with Rhoads, the state VA director, is slated for Aug. 7 in Stamford.

“We won’t know anything until then,” Patterson said.

Cheryll Duerk, who formed the Women Veterans Support Group of Stamford, said veterans must show up in force to keep the Stamford clinic going.

Beyond that, Duerk said, “I think we have to trust right now, which is really, really hard.”

The VA needs to listen to people, said DelVecchio, the Vietnam veteran.

“You hear the talk – we support the veterans, we support the veterans,” DelVecchio said. “But if you’re a veteran, you have to fight to find support.”

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