© 2024 New England Public Media

FCC public inspection files:
WGBYWFCRWNNZWNNUWNNZ-FMWNNI

For assistance accessing our public files, please contact hello@nepm.org or call 413-781-2801.
PBS, NPR and local perspective for western Mass.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Mass. Lawmakers Hear Heartbreaking Stories About Holyoke Home Outbreak

Flags outside of the Holyoke Soldiers' Home.
Miriam Wasser
/
WBUR
Flags outside of the Holyoke Soldiers' Home.

On one day in early March, Susan Kenney had been on the phone with her father's case manager at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home, trying to set up a Zoom call with her dad, a 78-year-old veteran of the Air Force.

The case manager said nothing about an outbreak of COVID-19 in the home, but when Kenney turned on the television that night there was the alarming news. A number of veterans at the home had tested positive for the virus.

She called the home, but couldn't get an answer about her father's condition. Fed up, she finally went out to her car and scrawled, "Is my dad alive?" on the window, and started to drive. She would get halfway to the home when her mother called to say her father, Charles Lowell, had tested positive. He would pass away from the virus on April 15.

"I didn't get an answer for over 30 hours. The numbers kept rising and I still didn't know if my father was dead or alive," Kenney testified Tuesday, choking back tears as she offered her family's story to the Special Joint Oversight Committee on the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke COVID-19 Outbreak.

The commission, chaired by Rep. Linda Dean Campbell of Methuen and Sen.Walter Timilty of Walpole, held its first hearing at Holyoke Community College on Tuesday to hear the stories of family members who lost family members to one of the most severe outbreaks of COVID-19 in the country. It will hold a similar hearing Thursday as it explores ways the Legislature can act to improve the operations of the Soldiers' Home.

"Hearing and validating what happened is important to moving on to the future of the home," said Rep. Aaron Vega, a Holyoke Democrat.

At least 76 residents of the veterans' home died due to COVID-19, and many more residents and staff tested positive. Gov. Charlie Baker ordered an independent investigation by former U.S. Attorney Mark Pearlstein, who concluded that decisions by Superintendent Bennett Walsh and other officials contributed to the scale of the crisis by combining care units and placing patients in close quarters where transmission could occur more easily.

Last month, Attorney General Maura Healey announced Walsh, and former medical director, David Clinton, will face criminal charges. U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling is also conducting his own probe.

Related Content