"I come back to see what they've done to my neighborhood."

Yesterday, a few hours after I posted a Stephen Hilger image of Wally Thurman as he moved out of his house, I saw Wally himself - for the first time in a long time, several months at least.

He drove up in his big white car to check things out, as he often did when his family home still stood in the VA Footprint.

Yesterday, though, as the white car trounced through the dust and dirt S. Rocheblave Street, there was almost nothing left of the neighborhood destroyed to make way for the VA Hospital. 

In the top photo, behind Wally and his dog, you can see two of the last three houses shorn of their roofs in anticipation of moving off the site.  And, hazy off in the distance, you can see Charity Hospital, looming behind the lower foothill peaks of McDonogh No. 11's roof.