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Physician assistant at Atlanta VA pens song as tribute to healthcare heroes

Joseph Handley said he wrote it with 'the confidence that one of the most powered up things we can offer another person is a sincere thank you.'

ATLANTA — (Ed. note: The video above features a different song.)

Joseph Handley, a physician assistant at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center, noticed that as the coronavirus pandemic has worn on, tributes like a "Heroes Work Here" sign outside his facility had lost a bit of their shine.

Wanting to recapture the spirit of the earlier days of the pandemic, he wrote a song in tribute to his fellow healthcare professionals.

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"I am in outpatient care, and yet, walk right by the COVID ICU every day. Now that we are few months into this COVID scare - the little sign out front that says "Heroes Work Here" is tattered and the helium balloons this morning at a screening station were half-inflated, hanging strangely droopy," he wrote to 11Alive. "I love a quote, stolen from the book 'Steal Like and Artist' (originally from Andre Gide) - 'Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no on was listening, everything must be said again.'"

Credit: Courtesy Joseph Handley

So he wrote the song, he said, and his singer-songwriter friend, Steve Collom, recorded it.

Handley said he wrote it with "the confidence that one of the most powered up things we can offer another person is a sincere thank you."

The song is called "Everyday Heroes," which he described as a "song of gratitude for those who heroically serve every day."

You can listen to here or stream it through the YouTube video below:

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