A group of volunteers who participated in an October 2017 trip for the Veterans Express Bus included, from left, driver Jimmy Revell, Nancy Horne, Frances Suber, Johnnie Shiver, Tom Davis and Virginia Davis.

MOULTRIE, Ga. —  Some six million veterans use the nation’s VA medical facilities, and with South Georgia’s history of service in the military, a respectable slice of that number live in this area.

While many of the region’s veterans can seek appropriate medical care at VA clinics throughout the area — including one in Tifton that opened a year ago — others need to travel to the Lake City, Fla., VA Medical Center for doctor appointments and treatment. Getting back and forth can be a burden.

For more than a quarter century, a group of Moultrie veterans and volunteers have helped their brothers-in-arms to get where they need to be.

The Veterans Express Bus was the brainchild of Jerry Poole of the Veterans Service Office in Moultrie. He proposed using a bus to take veterans from here to the hospital with stops at other South Georgia towns to pick up veterans from there.

“I told him, ‘I don’t think it’ll work, Jerry,’” recalled Johnnie Shiver, a World War II veteran active in the American Legion here. “He said, ‘Let’s try it and see.’”

The Thomas County Board of Education donated a surplus school bus and the project started off. Over the next 15 years or so, the veterans used a total of three surplus buses — two from Thomas County and one from Colquitt County — before they were finally able to buy a new one of their own with donations in 2004.

Retired Col. Hoyt Holland was instrumental in raising the money for the new bus, Shiver said.

Holland, who died in 2015, said in a 2011 interview that he also told Poole the idea for the bus wouldn’t work, but he agreed to upholster the old bus’s seats at his upholstery shop for free. As Poole proved him wrong, Holland became one of the bus’s biggest supporters, going so far as to get his own Commercial Driver’s License so he could drive sometimes.

The bus travels to the Lake City VA Medical Center every Thursday. It pulls into the Moultrie Walmart parking lot by 6 a.m., according to Tom Davis, who, along with Mark Martin, chairs the South Georgia Veterans Activities Committee, which operates the bus. Punctuality is important because sometimes veterans are waiting for the bus even then.

“We have veterans in the winter tell us, ‘I’ve been walking since 1:30 to get here,’” Davis said.

Volunteers bring sausage biscuits and coffee donated from local restaurants, and the bus departs at 7 a.m. Its route takes it through Coolidge, Thomasville, Boston, Quitman and Valdosta, picking up veterans at each place, and then it stops again to pick up veterans at the Jennings, Fla., exit on Interstate 75.

On a recent trip, the bus carried 24 people, mostly veterans with a few volunteers, and that’s roughly average. Participants remember trips with as few as 18 and one with 39.

“The 39 day, one of the volunteers had to sit on the floor,” Davis recalled.

The bus pulls into the VA hospital parking lot about 9:30 a.m., and the volunteers help the veterans get to their appointments if they need them to.

Appointments wrap up and the bus departs around 2:30 or 3 p.m. The volunteers serve sack lunches to the veterans — provided by local churches and the Moultrie Federated Guild on a rotating basis — and they get back to Moultrie around 6 p.m. after dropping off their charges at the same places they picked them up.

The meals are donated, the drivers and helpers are volunteers, and any costs are covered by donations.

“It costs them nothing to go down there,” Davis said. “Nothing at all.”

The Veterans Activities Committee operates a concession stand at Sunbelt Expo, Davis said, and that’s a big source of funding to operate the bus.

Anyone wishing to donate can make the check payable to the Veterans Express Bus and send it to Nancy Horne, the group’s treasurer, at 1925 Second St. S.E., Moultrie, Ga. 31768. The group is a 501(c)(3) non-profit agency, so donations may be tax-deductible.