1943: WWII casualties bring Army hospital to Fishersville

K.W. Stanley / "History in the Valley"
Published: June 9, 2008

Robert G. Slawson, M.D., of Wintergreen, suggested recently that General “Stonewall” Jackson’s death after Chancellorsville in May 1863 may have resulted from broken ribs he received from a fall off a stretcher and complications from pneumonia, despite wounds to his right hand and left arm.
Even then, appropriate medical attention and rehabilitation for war casualties preserved lives. The Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind (ca. 1839) in Staunton served as a Confederate hospital during the Civil War.
Between 1943-46, Woodrow Wilson General Hospital, an army hospital for World War II casualties, operated in Fishersville. The C&O Railroad facilities in Fishersville received wounded soldiers transported to this site for medical treatment.
After the war, the 58 buildings and 223-acre site were declared surplus property by the U.S. Government. The site, transferred to Virginia, was divided between the state and Augusta County.
The Woodrow Wilson Technical School (now Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center) opened in November 1947, occupied several buildings of the former army hospital and used medical equipment declared surplus. By June 1958, the mission of the technical school was expanded to include comprehensive physical and vocational rehabilitation for people with disabilities.
Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center was rebuilt during the 1970s with new dormitories, independent living skills training cottages, a rehabilitation wing, training classrooms, a chapel and recreational areas.
Current renovations to the medical building (40-bed capacity) are expected to be completed by Spring 2009. By that date, the center expects a stream of new clients (war veterans) from the war in Iraq.
The center employs 300 people, regularly serves about 260 clients and has served more than 70,000 persons with disabilities since 1947. The rehabilitation center serves a population with a wide variety of physical problems, including brain injuries, spinal cord injuries and disabling strokes which affect memory, speech and movement.
The center assists clients to develop needed skills in a secure environment. Training programs vary in length from days to weeks to months. Each year, 1,100 people are vocationally evaluated for training in heath care, electrical-mechanical, construction, service-related work and business. About 74 percent of persons with disabilities who complete training are employed.
The center provides essential equipment to clients upon departure. These include devices to assist clients with remembering, communication and hearing aids.
Augusta County located its school board offices, classrooms and maintenance to the site after World War II and occupied other buildings of the former army hospital. Wilson Memorial High School, Wilson Elementary School and the Valley Vocational-Technical Center operated from this site.
More recently, Augusta County Public Schools have constructed on this site a high school, a middle school, an elementary school, a vocational-technical school and a Governor’s School for Science and Technology.
In the late 1940s, Augusta County operated a public cannery in a building on-site. Families canned vegetables which were grown in their “victory gardens” after World War II.
The Red Cross conducted summer swimming classes for Augusta County and Waynesboro youth on this site during the late 1940s and early 1950s, before the War Memorial Swimming Pool was constructed at Ridgeview Park in Waynesboro.
K.W. Stanley is a Waynesboro resident, historian and TNV correspondent. Contact him at .