A five-year fight over Walla Walla's venerable VA hospital -- which the Dept. of Veterans Affairs has tried to shut down -- may be on a path to peaceful resolution. If so, veterans over a three-state area will breathe easier.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., will host Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James Peake in Walla Walla next Tuesday.

Peake will get to see a hospital whose buildings date to when Calvin Coolidge was in the White House. On a windy spring day, the visitor almost expects Gen. "Black Jack" Pershing and an early 20th Century U.S. calvary detachment to come riding around the corner.

Yet, there are few complaints about work that the hospital does in repairing the limbs and dealing with the stresses of those who have been in harm's way. About 10,200 Washington State reserves have served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The VA began efforts to close the hospital in 2003, just as car bombs and improvised explosive devices in Iraq were blasting alway all remaining pretensions of "Mission Accomplished".

Murray is a senior member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. She has virtually run the panel since Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006. (Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, at 83 one of the Senate's oldest members, is the chairman.)

Murray took on the VA by holding a memorable 2004 field hearing in Walla Walla. Five hundred people jammed into a community college auditorium. Witnesses noted that the hospital serves a huge geographical area in Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon and Northern Idaho.

Veterans groups warned that those seeking services now available in Walla Walla would have to drive more than 200 miles to Spokane, or more than 250 miles to Seattle or Portland.

Literally under pressure of a mob, with even Idaho Sen. Larry Craig taking a broad stance in opposition, regional VA bureaucrats abandoned their closure plans.

A strange episode followed two years later. Murray and husband Rob were at their vacation place on Whidbey Island. They saw a sign that a Bush cabinet secretary would be appearing in Oak Harbor.

It turned out to be then-VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, a former Republican National Committee chairman. Nicholson was making a stealth visit to Washington to campaign for GOP congressional candidates.

He flew into Walla Walla, without telling Murray, and announced that the hospital would become an "outpatient facility." No details were given.

Pursued by the Walter Reed Hospital scandal in the other Washington, Nicholson was replaced. And his successor turned out to be that rarity, a Bush cabinet secretary who knows his portfolio.

Peake is a former U.S. Army Surgeon General, and a Vietnam combat veteran with the 101st Airborne, who was awarded a silver star, bronze star, and Purple Heart with oak leaves.

Murray is still pounding away at Bush's proposed VA budget as "unacceptable", especially in its cuts to construction and a proposed gutting of the inspector general's office.

Still, she gets along with Peake. The two confer regularly. He has accepted the invite to visit Walla Walla, which is a big start toward restoring VA credibility in this corner of the country.