One of the most beautiful evenings of the South Dakota holiday season comes Tuesday (Dec. 8) at Hot Springs, a city with a 131-year legacy of caring for the veterans of South Dakota. That’s when the local Stillwater Hospice (112 S. Chicago) welcomes family and friends of deceased veterans for its annual Holiday Tree to Remember program, beginning at 5 pm.
Dawn Hurney, Stillwater’s director of clinical services, says attendees are welcomed at the door and offered an ornament to hang on a tree in honor of their loved one. “We have a signup sheet at the front where they can write the names of their veteran. This can be someone who died in the past year, or who died many years ago. As the program gets underway we will read the names, and if they wish they can talk a little about the loved one they lost. It’s a beautiful time. It never ceases to amaze me how touching it is." Hurney says the program is not limited to families of hospice patients.
Hot Springs has a rich history of caring for soldiers and veterans. In 1889, the very year that South Dakota gained statehood, the legislature established a Soldier’s Home there, partly because the city’s natural warm-water springs had already gained a reputation for health and rejuvenation. A few years later, the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers began to send Civil War veterans to Hot Springs. The care was so well-received — both the waters and the people there — that President Teddy Roosevelt signed a bill to establish a federal veteran’s hospital that was originally called Battle Mountain Sanatorium.
Today the state’s nursing home is thriving. It’s now called the Michael J. Fitzmaurice South Dakota Veterans Home. The federal sanitarium grew to become the Veterans Administration Black Hills Health Care System. Hot Springs’ healing history has won it a nickname as “The Veterans’ Town,” and now attracts tourists who appreciate the patriotic mission of the community’s citizenry.
In recent years, federal officials were making plans to close the federal hospital. A “Save the VA” group organized to prevent the closure, and last September the Veterans Administration announced that it would remain open.
Warm spring waters was the first attraction for state and federal leaders who established health facilities in the Southern Hills city of 3,500. A warm-hearted culture has kept the nursing home and hospital open. Tuesday’s holiday tree service at the Stillwater Hospice is a holiday example of how the people of Hot Springs care for our veterans and their families.