WASHINGTON -- The man who is temporarily replacing Eric Shinseki as secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs is a U.S. Military Academy graduate, a onetime banker and a former chief executive of the USO who joined the VA just three months ago.

The acting secretary, Sloan Gibson, was confirmed by the Senate in February to be Shinseki's deputy. But with Shinseki's resignation during a scandal over waiting times at VA medical centers, President Barack Obama on Friday elevated Gibson while the White House searches for a permanent replacement.

"Sloan, I think, would be the first to acknowledge that he's going to have a learning curve that he's got to deal with," Obama said at the White House in announcing the appointment.

"But the nature of the problem that has surfaced and is -- has been the cause of this attention is one that we can start tackling right away, and without completely transforming the system, we can immediately make some progress."

During his five years at the USO, Gibson oversaw "dramatic growth," according to his official biography on the VA website, which notes that "net fundraising grew 90 percent." Before his time there, Gibson spent more than two decades in banking in cities including Atlanta; Nashville, Tenn.; Charlotte, N.C.; and Birmingham, Ala.

The son of a member of the Army Air Corps who served as a B-17 tail gunner during World War II, Gibson graduated from West Point in 1975 and later obtained a master's degree in economics from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a master's in public administration from Harvard.

In 2011, while Gibson was running the USO, Obama awarded the organization the National Medal of Arts "for lifting the spirits of service members and their families through the arts."

Gibson accepted the award at the White House on behalf of the organization.

In his new VA post, he will face the immediate task of getting veterans off long waiting lists to see doctors. Obama described the challenge Friday, assuring reporters that Gibson was up to the task.

"How do we make sure that there's no slippage between somebody making a phone call and then getting an appointment scheduled?" Obama said. "And let's have a realistic time for how soon they're going to get an appointment. Those are things that don't require rocket science. It requires execution. It requires discipline. It requires focus. Those are things that Sloan has."

A Section on 05/31/2014