Walter Reed

Walter Reed, 72, a retired track inspector for the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, died Friday at his home on Clifton Avenue of cancer.Funeral services were being held today at the Simmons Memorial Baptist Church, Pennsylvania Avenue and Cumberland Street.Mr. Reed retired in 1978 after working for the railroad in Baltimore for 33 years. Earlier, he worked for Archer Laundry.During World War II, he served in the Army and was decorated for his service in Italy.A native of Caroline, Va., he came to Baltimore as a child with his family.

Tracy Balazs, the president and CEO of an Annapolis-based staffing firm, was named Entrepreneurial Success of the Year last month by the Baltimore district office of the U.S. Small Business Administration. She founded the company, Federal Staffing Resources LLC, in 2004. It now employs more than 300 people, has eight offices across the country and generates more than $30 million in revenue annually. The company mainly provides health professionals to government outfits, including the Army, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Federal Aviation Administration, though FSR recently expanded its operations to the staffing of private companies.

While many teenagers were eagerly anticipating what gifts they will receive this holiday season, students at Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City were making sure that soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center don't go empty-handed. Mount Hebron High staged its fourth annual Operation Remembering Our Troops for soldiers recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda. During the drive, which was launched by office secretary Maura Dribben, the school collected such items as gift cards of $5 or $10 that soldiers can use at department stores and grocery stores, as well as phone cards.

A motorcade of police vehicles escorting wounded military service members from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to New York City will cause roving lane closures on multiple area highways Wednesday morning, according to Baltimore Police. The motorcade will begin at Walter Reed in Bethesda at 7 a.m. and is expected to impact morning commutes in the Washington and Baltimore metropolitan area, police said. The motorcade will travel northbound along Interstate 495 and Interstate 95. krector@baltsun.com twitter.com/rectorsun

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday that he has asked the department's top military and civilian leaders to begin meeting weekly to carry out recommendations of review groups that have examined failures at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Gates said his deputy, Gordon England, will lead a strategy and oversight group consisting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and health officials to see that reforms proposed by the Pentagon's Independent Review Group, a commission appointed by President Bush and other task forces are put into effect.

BETHESDA - President Bush turned a spade of dirt to ceremonially launch a major expansion of one of the nation's premier military hospitals yesterday, saying he hoped a new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center "will be the site of many miracles of healing." Flanked by officers, soldiers and civilian military leaders, Bush joined Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Montgomery County and Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown in dipping a gold-painted shovel into a container of soil in the shadow of the art deco tower that is the centerpiece of the National Naval Medical Center.

WASHINGTON -- Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey resigned under pressure from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday, becoming the second top Army official forced to step down because of revelations of problems in the care of seriously injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In an unusually harsh denunciation, Gates said he was displeased with some Army officials over their handling of disclosures that soldiers had received substandard housing and poor outpatient treatment at Walter Reed.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush inspected the much-maligned Walter Reed Army Medical Center yesterday and reiterated his promise to fix the bureaucratic bungling that led to shoddy living conditions and treatment delays for wounded soldiers - problems that sparked a shake-up of top-ranking military officials. In his first visit to what had been regarded as the nation's premier military hospital since the disclosure of squalid conditions there earlier this year, Bush apologized for "bureaucratic and administrative failures."

WASHINGTON --The two-star general in charge of Walter Reed Army Medical Center was relieved of command yesterday, after disclosures that wounded soldiers being treated as outpatients were living in dilapidated quarters and enduring long waits for care. Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, a physician and a graduate of West Point, was fired because Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey "had lost trust and confidence" in his ability to make improvements in outpatient care at Walter Reed, the Army said in a brief statement.

Marcy Gorsline has her own stories to tell about the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, similar to the tales of squalor and neglect that spawned congressional hearings last week and led to the firing of the hospital's commander. Hers involve the care of her son, Pfc. Caleb Lufkin, who was injured by a roadside bomb in Baghdad last May and spent three weeks recovering at Walter Reed. The sink in his room kept clogging, she said, and workers left the bathroom coated with black filth whenever they finished with the plunger.

Ever since Harford County learned that the nationwide military base realignment would bring up to 10,000 new jobs to Aberdeen Proving Ground, officials and residents have pushed for road improvements around the Army base. Average daily traffic on Route 715 to and from the installation grew from 7,950 vehicles in 2004, the year before the Base Realignment and Closure process was announced, to 12,612 in 2011, according to the State Highway Administration. Traffic on U.S. 40 near the post increased by nearly 3,000 vehicles per day. "As we prepared for BRAC, our No. 1 roads priority was upgrades to intersections closest to the installation," said Karen Holt, who manages a consortium of government agencies and business groups formed to promote economic development in the region.

While many teenagers were eagerly anticipating what gifts they will receive this holiday season, students at Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City were making sure that soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center don't go empty-handed. Mount Hebron High staged its fourth annual Operation Remembering Our Troops for soldiers recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda. During the drive, which was launched by office secretary Maura Dribben, the school collected such items as gift cards of $5 or $10 that soldiers can use at department stores and grocery stores, as well as phone cards.

Perhaps no one could have anticipated that the stresses of his job as an Army psychiatrist counseling traumatized veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with his own conflicted feelings about Islamic terrorism and dread of being deployed to a war zone, would result in Maj. Nidal Hasan standing accused of killing 13 and wounding 38 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood Army base in Texas last week. The factors that cause certain men and women to snap under pressure are as unpredictable as they are devastating to the individuals involved and those around them.

The gunshots came out of the blue. An Army psychiatrist, trained to treat soldiers under stress, allegedly opened fire Thursday in a crowded medical building at Fort Hood, Texas. When the assault ended minutes later, the attack had become what is believed to be the largest mass shooting ever to occur on a U.S. military base. Twelve were killed and 31 wounded. Nidal Malik Hasan, a major who had made a career in the military, fired a pair of pistols, one a semiautomatic, shooting and scattering people as they waited to see doctors, according to authorities.

The floors were lacquered and shining, the grass was mowed, and the handicapped-access tracks and ramps in the new, $800,000 Pasadena home were ready for use. Just miles away, in Washington, Sgt. David Battle, a triple amputee from injuries he suffered in Iraq, sat in the small suite he, his wife, Lakeisa, and four children have shared at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for the past year and a half. Their bags were packed. A nonprofit group, Homes for Our Troops, and hundreds of Maryland volunteers had built the home from scratch.

BETHESDA - President Bush turned a spade of dirt to ceremonially launch a major expansion of one of the nation's premier military hospitals yesterday, saying he hoped a new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center "will be the site of many miracles of healing." Flanked by officers, soldiers and civilian military leaders, Bush joined Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Montgomery County and Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown in dipping a gold-painted shovel into a container of soil in the shadow of the art deco tower that is the centerpiece of the National Naval Medical Center.

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Democrats kept up their attacks yesterday on substandard care for injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as they prepared for hearings on the issue this week. "If it's this bad at the outpatient facilities at Walter Reed, how is it in the rest of the country?" Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, said on ABC's This Week. "Walter Reed is our crown jewel." In a letter sent yesterday to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Schumer called for the creation of an independent commission to examine conditions at all medical facilities treating military personnel and veterans.

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. -- If Building 18 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center represents the nadir of outpatient care for wounded military personnel, the Marine Corps is hoping that a former maternity ward here represents the opposite. At the 25-bed Wounded Warrior Center, opened in August, injured Marines and sailors live mostly in two-person rooms that are freshly painted and furnished. A recreation room and dining room are just down the hall. Medical case managers from the Marine Corps and Veterans Affairs arrive frequently to check on each patient's progress.

WASHINGTON - When President Bush breaks ground today for a new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, Phil Alperson may be thinking about how Route 355 is going to handle the thousands of additional staff, patients and visitors the hospital is expected to draw each day. "You cannot increase the personnel ... by one-third, or double the hospital load to nearly 1 million visits to the campus each year, without having a significant impact...

WASHINGTON - The House approved hundreds of millions of dollars yesterday to speed construction of the new Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, part of the national base realignment that is expected to bring tens of thousands of jobs to Maryland. The funding was part of the war spending bill approved last night 268-155, which provides $162 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The legislation did not include $75 million that the Senate had approved for commercial fisheries disaster assistance, money that Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, had sought to assist Chesapeake Bay watermen.