U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Chief of Staff Margaret Kabat, who was in Dayton for the unveiling, enjoyed the moment.
“I’m excited to see the real thing,” Kabat said of the statue. “We’re doing this really to celebrate the entire Dayton community coming together to support veterans.”
The Dayton VA campus is one the nation’s oldest centers of care for veterans. Lincoln in 1865, in the Civil War’s waning days, signed the legislation creating a system of soldier’s homes to care for veterans, and the Dayton Soldier’s Home was one of the first three initially authorized.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
That home became what today is the Dayton VA Medical Center and its surrounding array of services and residences. Today, the campus cares for more than 60,000 veterans in the Dayton area, western Ohio and Indiana.
“We’re celebrating our past and really looking forward to our future,” Kabat said.
It was in Lincoln’s second inaugural address that he charged the nation with the responsbility of caring for veterans and their families — saying we must “care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan.”
The statue has been years in the making. In 2018, an organization called the American Veterans Heritage Center, working with the Lincoln Society of Dayton, launched its efforts to erect a bronze statue of Lincoln on the campus.
Major has depicted Lincoln, pen in hand, signing legislation establishing the National Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Asylum for Civil War veterans.
“This is the second Lincoln monument that I’ve had the privilege to do,” Major said Monday. “I feel like Dayton is sort of my home city. I was born here ... and I went to the Dayton Art Institute for six years. This is something that was really personally important to me.”
Major also created the Lincoln statue that was placed on Dayton Courthouse Square in 2016.
American Veterans Heritage Center president Bill DeFries said the statue will be a place for reflection and a place to attract tourists to see the National VA History Center and the Dayton National Cemetery on campus.
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