MOULTRIE, Ga. — A new 12-passenger van to carry veterans to the Lake City, Fla., Veterans Administration Hospital is now paid for.

Robert Hutson Jr., of the Moultrie car dealership that bears his name, helped arrange the purchase of the 2018 Ford Transit van, and he’s been instrumental in helping to get donations to pay for it.

The van will be owned by the VA hospital, which will maintain it and keep insurance coverage on it, but it will be based at the VA clinic in Lowndes County, where it will transport veterans five days a week for appointments at the hospital.

“The van they had has right at 250,000 miles on it,” Hutson said. “It’s wore out. It was breaking down regularly on them going back and forth to Lake City.”

The van is unrelated to the Veterans Express Bus, which picks up veterans throughout the area for a trip to the Lake City VA hospital each Thursday. The bus is operated by the South Georgia Veterans Activities Committee, based in Moultrie.

Hutson began soliciting and receiving donations right after he became involved with the project earlier this year. He said he soon realized he needed some help with it and joined up with Darlene Cox, whose family owns CTV (formerly Cox Truck and Van).

Cox is on the board of directors of a charitable foundation called Fishes and Loaves that until that time had been focused on small-scale local projects, such as providing help for someone who couldn’t pay a utility bill one month or who needed help to get to a doctor’s appointment. Fishes and Loaves — whose name is a reference to Matthew 14:15-21, where Jesus used five loaves of bread and two fishes to feed a multitude of people — is a 501(3)c nonprofit agency; that means donations to it — whether for the veterans van or any other purpose — are fully tax-deductible.

The effort has currently raised $37,000 for the van, Cox said.

Hutson did not say what the van costs, but he said whatever overage there might be would be donated to other veterans groups, including the Veterans Express Bus.

“Our veterans have done so much for us through the years to keep us safe and free,” Hutson said. “We should never forget what they’ve done.”

The veterans van will be available for any veteran, regardless of where they live, Hutson said, although it will be based in Valdosta, so the veteran would have to get to the VA clinic there by departure time. The implication is that Lowndes County veterans would have better access, and as it turned out, more than half the donations did come from Lowndes County donors, he said.

The rest of the donations came from Colquitt, Cook, Mitchell and Worth counties and even from outside of South Georgia, he said.

“A veteran is a veteran,” Cox said. “They had a need, and we helped meet that need.”