For the past 10 years, church bulletin announcements and newspaper pleas have kept volunteer drivers behind the wheel of a red-white-and-blue, 15-passenger van. Five days a week. For more than 165,000 miles. Buckling up more than 1,000 riders from Troup County.

The van leaves every weekday in the early morning hours to head north to the Atlanta VA Medical Center, the Decatur Clinic, the Northlake Clinic and the East Point Clinic or south to the Central Alabama Medical Center in Tuskegee. Veterans are able to ride to the clinics and meet with doctors and other medical personnel, then head for home that afternoon.

Now it’s time for a new van.

“We’ve got to raise $16,000 by the end of the year,” said Dave Lyons, volunteer coordinator for the van. “I don’t want the van to go over 200,000 miles.”

The current van, maintained by the Disabled American Veterans office, was purchased in 1999. The local DAV chapter is responsible for raising one-third of the cost, with other groups, including the national DAV office, paying the rest.

“Once we buy the van, we turn it over to the VA. They own it and maintain it. They also purchase the gas and insure it,” Lyons said.

Only once in the past 10 years has the van failed to make it to a destination.

“The van broke down only once so far. It went down in Opelika on the way to Tuskegee. A doctor saw it on the road and stopped and picked up the riders and took them on to the VA hospital,” Lyons recalled.

A Tuskegee employee drove the riders back to Troup County that afternoon.

Lyons called a Ford dealer in Opelika to tow the van.

“I told him what we did and that I needed it back as soon as possible. Every day we don’t have that van on the road is a day someone doesn’t get to see a doctor. He called me that evening and said to come get the van,” he said.

Lyons does everything he can to keep the van ready to go, but it’s the volunteer network that keeps it on the road. Lyons oversees scheduling riders and his 25 volunteer drivers.

Troup County is among the best organized veteran’s transportation program. Other communities provide van rides once a week or sometimes less than that. The Troup County van is the only one in Georgia that travels five days a week Lyons has been recognized for his work by Georgia DAV, which named him coordinator of the year for the last two years.

The van is available to any veteran, said Mike Hudson, manager of the Georgia Department of Veterans Services office in LaGrange.

“We have more than 5,500 veterans in Troup County that are eligible to go to the VA hospital,” he said.

Sherri Brown can be reached at sbrown@ lagrangenews.com or at (706) 884-7311, Ext. 240.