Vet takes issue with hospital's namesake
By HOWARD ALTMAN
The Tampa Tribune
Published: October 22, 2012
TAMPA
Bob Sawallesh figures he has spent thousands of hours over the years helping patients at the James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital.
He has driven them to appointments, interviewed homeless veterans to help them get assistance and worked with the wounded and their families.
But in all that time, the retired Army lieutenant colonel from Valrico never saw a picture of the hospital's namesake prominently displayed.
Curious, Sawallesh began to look into Haley. Always interested in research, he spent hours in front of the computer, in dusty library stacks and going through boxes of documents.
What he found spurred him to ask that the hospital's name be changed.
In 1945, Haley was sent to prison for what prosecutors say was his role in one of the worst fires in the nation's history — a blaze at a Ringling Brothers circus show in Hartford, Conn., that killed 168 and injured nearly 500 others.
"How can you name a hospital that treats severely burned combat veterans after a man who spent time in jail for a fire that killed so many?" asks Sawallesh.
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