Standing in the dining room of the new housing and administration complex of the H. John Heinz III VA Progressive Care Center in Aspinwall yesterday, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter recalled how his father struggled to cope with life after World War I.

Harry Specter, who came to the United States from Russia in 1911, was wounded in combat in France's Argonne Forest, the senator recalled. After the war, his father returned to Kansas and planned to start his life largely on the government's promise to pay veterans a $500 bonus.

"But the government broke its promise. And when the veterans marched on Washington to demand their bonus, President Hoover called out the Army, which fired on and killed veterans on the Mall in one of the blackest days in American history," he said.

That incident, and his father's experience as a veteran who never got his bonus, is one of the key reasons Mr. Specter, R-Pa., entered public service, he said.

"The first veteran I knew was my father, and the government broke its promise to him. In a way, I have been on my way to Washington ever since to get my father's bonus," said Mr. Specter, himself a veteran of the Korean War.

He was in Aspinwall to preside at the official opening of the complex there -- a part of the consolidation of the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, which has received some $295 million in federal funding since 2004.

"Without Sen. Specter, this project couldn't have happened," said Michael Moreland, network director of VA Healthcare, a group of VA medical centers and clinics throughout Pennsylvania and Delaware and in parts of West Virginia, New Jersey, Ohio and New York.

The new administration center has VA offices, clinic space, a dining room and recreational facilities. It is surrounded by six buildings that have 13 units and can hold 98 beds. The groundbreaking for a new ambulatory center on the Aspinwall campus is expected in the next few weeks.