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For Immediate Release

Congress Named a VA Clinic for Four Liberty County Sons Killed in Vietnam. The Clinic Still Doesn’t Bear Their Name.

HINESVILLE, Ga. — In 2024, Congress passed and the President signed Public Law 118-61, designating the Department of Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic in Hinesville, Georgia, as the “John Gibson, Dan James, William Sapp, and Frankie Smiley VA Clinic” — in honor of four Liberty County men who were killed in action in Vietnam in 1968.

More than two years later, the clinic’s primary exterior signage still reads “Ralph H. Johnson Healthcare System” — a name Congress never authorized for this facility — while the four heroes’ Congressionally mandated name appears only on a smaller monument sign at the road. A geo-tagged photograph taken by a City of Hinesville building inspector in September 2024 shows both signs side by side.

According to the VA’s own records, the Charleston VA leadership spent $87,399.55 on the unauthorized exterior signage — part of roughly $230,000 in documented signage modifications across the system — and submitted no design-manual variance for the work, as the VA’s own rules require.

The effort to honor the four heroes was led by Liberty County veterans and Gold Star families. Having exhausted the VA’s administrative channels, the plaintiffs have prepared a federal lawsuit under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Mandamus Act to compel the VA to fully comply with Public Law 118-61 and make the heroes’ name the clinic’s primary identification.

The ask is simple: honor the law, and the four men, that Congress already chose to honor.