The leader of a veterans' care center in Massachusetts where 76 veterans died after contracting the coronavirus in the spring of 2020 lacked both the leadership skills and the temperament to run such a facility when he was hired in 2016, according to a blistering state Inspector General's report released Friday.
The 91-page report, which covers the period from May 2016 until February 2020 — just before the pandemic struck with full force — was also highly critical of the process that led to the hiring of Bennett Walsh as superintendent of the Holyoke Soldiers' Home and of state oversight of the home.
