Here is a Gulfport, Mississippi SUN HERALD newspaper article that was forwarded to me:
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YATES TO BUILD ARMED FORCES RETIREMENT HOME
By RYAN LaFONTAINE
GULFPORT ------
A one hundred eighty-nine million dollar contract to build the new Armed Forces Retirement Home here has been awarded to Yates Construction, the General Services Administration announced Monday.
The Biloxi company will begin designing the new building and will take over the Gulfport campus for construction sometime in January, after the old eleven story building is demolished, according to the Government Services Administration.
The Government Services Administration serves as a procurement and property management agency for the federal government.
Two days after Hurricane Katrina pummeled the beachfront campus in Gulfport, nearly four hundred veterans evacuated and headed for the government's only other retirement home, just four miles from the Capitol in Washington.
The average age of the veterans sent to Washington was seventy-eight.
Construction on the new Gulfport home is expected to be completed in Two Thousand Ten, and meantime, Gulfport's former residents will remain in Washington.
Most of those residents are part of the rapidly vanishing generation of Second World War veterans, who die at a rate of about one thousand three hundred a day, according to Department of Veterans Affairs estimates.
Congress appropriated two hundred forty million dollars for the new buildings, which are not yet designed.
The project awarded to Yates will be a design build, which means it will be designed as it goes along.
Ma Chis Lower Creek Indian Tribe Enterprises, an Alabama based company, was awarded the seven and a half million dollar demolition contract, which should be completed by the end of January.
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Frankly, although I would love the opportunity to transfer down to Gulfport, I remain suspicious about all this.
I think the entire administrative staff here at the Old Soldiers' Home must be lying to us, over and over, and I can't believe a single word they tell us.
They keep telling us they're desperate for funding and that they can't fill all the vacancies we have here.
If that were true, then why not sell the Naval Home property to the casinos, who would gladly pay dearly for it?
Also, the honchos here have stated the Naval Home couldn't be reoccupied because all the neighboring logistical support in the local communities was totally wiped out by the hurricane.
Furthermore, what guarantee is there that any future multi-million dollar Naval Home located on the beach in Gulfport, Mississippi won't again be demolished or heavily damaged by another powerfully catastrophic hurricane?
If they can't fill the vacancies here, then why are they so anxious to build another huge structure in Mississippi, with a whole bunch of vacancies to be filled there?
The stuff they've been telling us just doesn't add up.
Maybe it's a safety factor?
No one dares discuss race, but the awful unspoken truth is, those of us who have to live with it certainly know the difference between a white community and a black community.
It's one of the main reasons I wanted to transfer, prior to Hurricane Katrina.
I was also looking forward to camping on the beach at night and playing my guitar.
So, what do you reckon the real story is?
Anyway, how many of us will still be alive when that facility reopens, IF it ever reopens?
Thank you.
John Robert "SAIGON" Mallernee, KB3KWS
Official Bard of Clan Henderson
Washington, D.C. 20011-8400
NOTE: "My unpopular and controversial personal opinions are independent of my Scottish clan."
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