[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 200 (Friday, December 15, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S18734-S18735]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      RETIREMENT OF LEE M. NACKMAN

  Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to take a 
few brief moments of the Senate's time to acknowledge the impending 
retirement of Mr. Lee M. Nackman from Federal service.
  For nearly 10 years, Mr. Nackman has served as the Director of the 
Los Angeles VA Outpatient Clinic. During his tenure, he has taken his 
clinic from substandard basement quarters to a $40 million, state-of-
the-art, ambulatory care center in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.
  The constituency served by the clinic brings to it a myriad of 
medical and psychosocial problems. Many of the veterans care for are 
homeless, living on the streets literally within sight of Los Angeles' 
City Hall. In large measure because of his leadership, each of the 
veterans cared by the clinic is treated with the dignity and respect 
they have earned through service to their country. This is a difficult 
patient population, yet Lee Nackman has assured that it is one that is 
well served by the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system.
  Mr. President, on January 3, 1996, Mr. Nackman is ending a 
distinguished 35-year career of service to America's veterans. He began 
as a pharmacy intern at the Manhattan VA Medical Center upon completion 
of his B.S. degree from Columbia University. While working as a 
pharmacy resident at what is now the West Los Angeles VA Medical 

[[Page S18735]]
Center, he completed his M.Sc. degree at the University of Southern 
California School of Pharmacy.

  Throughout his career with the Veterans Administration, now the 
Department of Veterans Affairs, he has held a series of positions of 
ever increasing responsibility in pharmacy and in health care 
management, to include 2 years as Assistant Director of the VA hospital 
in Sheridan, WY.
  While in Los Angeles, Mr. Nackman has chaired the Southern California 
and Southern Nevada network of the Veterans Health Administration. His 
leadership was instrumental in creating a more integrated, more patient 
focused approach to caring for the more than 1.7 million veterans 
residing in that area. This network approach to providing health care 
has served as a model for the national reorganization of VA health care 
delivery into Veterans Integrated Service Networks.
  Mr. Nackman currently chairs the Greater Los Angeles Federal 
Executive Board, in which capacity he has shown leadership in 
encouraging a range of Federal partnerships which assure the provision 
of services administered by all Federal agencies in a more efficient 
and effective manner. This country's taxpayers deserve no less.

  Mr. President, Lee Nackman has brought honor and dignity to the 
status of Federal employee. He has contributed to all that is good 
about those in Government who provide goods and services to our 
citizens, and most significantly, to the veterans he has so directly 
cared for over the 35 years of his distinguished career. Those of us 
who care deeply about this Nation's veterans can but thank those men 
and women, like Lee Nackman, who have dedicated themselves to the 
service of veterans. It is fitting that we recognize that service 
today. It is also appropriate that we express our thanks to Lee 
Nackman--and indeed, to so many dedicated public servants, the best of 
whom he represents--at this, the moment of his retirement.
  Mr. President, I know all in this body join with me in this 
valedictory. We wish Lee Nackman many years of a satisfying retirement. 
During that time he can truly look back upon a job well done.

                          ____________________