Ann Ashford remembers the first times she toured the Veterans of Administrative Affairs medical center in Omaha.
The exam rooms were cramped. The place felt old. There wasn’t even a restroom there for female veterans.
Her husband, then U.S. Rep. Brad Ashford, “saw a need and saw a way to solve it,” she said, pulling together a unique public-private partnership with Omaha’s philanthropic community and the federal government.
That effort cut through a slow bureaucratic process and got a new, $86 million Ambulatory Care Center built, a facility that now serves 40,000 veterans a year in central Omaha.
A former state legislative colleague of Ashford’s, Burke Harr, called the pathway to congressional approval of the center “a novel idea, a complicated idea and not the sort of legislation that passes simply because it’s a good idea.”
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Harr, now a lobbyist, said that some laughed when Ashford stated that he wanted to “make 50 friends” in Congress, but those relationships paid off and helped get the VA center legislation passed.
On Saturday, friends and colleagues of Brad Ashford will gather to celebrate the politician’s unique approach to solving problems with the commemorative naming of a street that runs by the new VA center.
The event, at 3 p.m. on the corner of Woolworth Avenue and Field Club Trail, is a fitting tribute to Ashford’s proudest accomplishment, according to his widow, Ann.
“He was always after the next big thing,” she said. “He was always thinking how could I make something better.”
The Omaha City Council, on June 30, approved a resolution unanimously renaming a portion of Woolworth Avenue that runs past the VA center in honor of Ashford. A Democrat, he represented Omaha’s 2nd Congressional District from 2015-17, after serving 16 years in the Nebraska Legislature as a registered Republican.
He was a regular contributor to the Nebraska Examiner before his death in 2022 of brain cancer. He was 72.
The resolution for an honorary “Brad Ashford Street” was suggested by a former congressional aide, Christian Espinosa Torres, now the assistant director of the human rights and relations department for the City of Omaha.
Espinosa Torres, in a letter to the City Council, said that one of the most important lessons he learned from Ashford was to “look beyond partisan politics and focus on the issue itself.”
“Brad believed that good ideas can come from anywhere and that our responsibility as public servants is to solve problems, not score political points,” he wrote.
Ashford’s accomplishments included passing the legislation that helped finance the construction of a new sports arena in Omaha, now the CHI Center, and adoption of a policy to share proceeds of turn back taxes with smaller communities, so they could build or rehabilitate civic buildings. He was also a promoter of criminal justice reforms in hopes of avoiding the construction of a costly, new state prison.
Ann Ashford said that besides Espinosa Torres, former Omaha City Council member Chris Jerram will speak at the street dedication event on Saturday.
This story is provided by States Newsroom, a nonprofit state news network and Blox Digital content partner.
