In Vietnam, John Gradwell of Huntingdon could work himself into underground passages designed by the Viet Cong to frustrate admittance.

At the Van Zandt VA Medical Center in Altoona, the former tunnel rat found himself frustrated recently by an entry designed to make admittance easy.

Gradwell complained about the setup Tuesday during a Van Zandt town hall — and learned that hospital administrators had sent an engineer to the doorway that very day to simulate Gradwell’s problem and find a fix.

A 5-year-old could have done better designing that doorway, Gradwell told the panel of administrators who ran the town hall.

The entry defeated him, because when he rolled his wheelchair close enough to push the electronic entry button, his wheelchair’s presence prevented the door from responding, he explained.

It has forced him to resort to banging on the door to alert someone inside, he said.

The engineer used a wheelchair to duplicate Gradwell’s experience and determined that the door didn’t open as a safety precaution, so it wouldn’t strike what was so close, said Van Zandt Associate Director Charles Becker after the meeting.

Workers will fix the problem by installing the button farther from the door — maybe on a nearby railing, as Gradwell suggested — or by adjusting the sensor that tells the door the wheelchair is too close, Becker said.

Sometimes a safety feature makes something “a little too safe,” Becker said.

Gradwell also complained about a recently installed phone system.

Once recently, he was stuck on hold for 45 minutes — an annoyance exacerbated by “ungodly music” that reminded him of the soundtrack from “Jaws.”

“Very, very frustrating,” Gradwell said.

Then it happened twice more.

“Our time is valuable, too,” he said.

The hospital is working with the service provider to fix the system, which consolidated four call centers into one, Becker said.

The problem has occurred for only a small number of vets, Becker said.

Until the service provider figures out what’s wrong, callers who experience a wait of more than several minutes should hang up and call again, he said.

Wouldn’t that put the caller at the back of the queue? Gradwell asked.

If a caller is waiting that long, he is not in the queue anyway, Becker said.

Gradwell also complained about a lack of designated surface parking spots for handicapped people who aren’t paralyzed.

He could use the hospital’s new parking garage, but that could trigger his post-traumatic stress syndrome, his legacy as a tunnel rat, he said.

He went into the garage at Logan Valley Mall once, he said.

Never in 45 years of marriage had he struck his wife, he said, until that day.

“It put me back in country (in Vietnam),” he said.

Accordingly, he’d like the hospital to designate a few surface spaces only for patients who use wheelchairs or scooters, he said.

“We’ll take that into consideration,” said Interim Director Chuck Thilges, adding that without hearing such complaints, “we can’t make changes.”

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.