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Georgia War Veterans Home domiciliary closes it doors...

The Georgia War Veterans Home domiciliary in Lawrenceville closes it doors to the 81 veterans that called it home due to the state's budget cutbacks.

In early August, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue wrote a memo to the state Department of Veterans Services, which runs the home, instructing the agency to devise plans to cut expenditures by 6 percent, 8 percent and 10 percent for the remainder of the fiscal year and next.

The department took a “real, real hard look” at its domiciliary care here, said Len Glass, the department’s assistant commissioner for administration. The program cost the state $2.7 million annually. By cutting it for the rest of this fiscal year (FY officially ends on June 30, 2009), the department would deduct $1.7 million from its $25 million budget. It would represent more than a 10 percent reduction for the next fiscal year, he said.

In making their decision to cut the program, officials also looked at other numbers. The 81 residents, Glass said, represented far less than 1 percent of the state’s total veteran population, estimated at 760,000.

So in late August, Glass delivered the news to the domiciliary's residents: The brave men, who’d served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, needed to look for a new place to stay by the end of November.

“It was a very difficult decision for us,” Glass said. “Nobody disliked this more than we did.”

To read more about this decision and one resident's experience, click here.