He’s on a brand new mission.
A Lengthy Island veteran who fought in Vietnam has discovered a ardour for portray to combat his personal battles with PTSD — and is now instructing the artform to assist heal different troopers fighting the affliction.
“I wasn’t solely getting nightmares. I used to be getting daymares,” 78-year-old John Melillo, a former navy police sergeant, informed The Submit of his trauma.
“The Vietnam guys are powerful … however I’ll hear from their family members. A spouse will say, ‘he’s speaking now, he by no means talked about these things earlier than.’”
Melillo’s strategies are primarily based on his personal struggles, having witnessed horrific atrocities abroad as soon as being drafted shortly after graduating from Cornell within the late Nineteen Sixties.
The burning photos seared into his thoughts from Saigon stayed with him as soon as he returned to the US, throughout stints in advertising and marketing and gross sales — all of the whereas conserving the dysfunction internalized. He wasn’t identified with PTSD till greater than 45 years after serving within the Military.
“I couldn’t get in an elevator, I couldn’t get away from bed,” Melillo, of Eastport, mentioned.
“I imply, I used to be simply floored.”
The burden solely worsened as soon as he reached his golden years, however in scrambling to seek out methods to manage he found a life-changing expertise for the comb.
“I by no means drew a straight line earlier than,” mentioned Melillo. “It was a present from God. He noticed I used to be struggling.
“He noticed I used to be in huge bother, as a result of I actually was.”
Melillo started illustrating East Finish landscapes and scenes he captured on movie whereas serving in Vietnam, which gave him a wholly new arsenal to combat his demons.
His works are presently on show on the Westhampton and Hampton Bays libraries, along with a handful of Starbucks on the South Fork — one even made the duvet of the November challenge of Dan’s Papers.
Combating a brand new battle
The ex-soldier paints and focuses on the intense spots of humanity he photographed throughout the battle, akin to an orphanage that took in youngsters on either side of the combating.
“So that you speak about folks doing the mistaken issues, right here’s someone doing the best issues,” he mentioned.
“I needed to immortalize that.”
He additionally etched a touching portrait of King, an Military canine with whom Melillo grew to become extremely shut with. King saved his life on a number of events, together with in an occasion when the sergeant found he was strolling via a minefield.
“He sniffed us out of the entire place,” Melillo mentioned of his canine companion, who additionally barked away a white tiger hiding in dense brush that he was about to set foot in.
“My story is that life goes on. I wish to be constructive about this.”
Melillo honed his craft sufficient to instruct different veterans on how you can paint almost three years in the past.
He does an train in school and has the painters all of the sudden halt in the course of their work, asking, “What do you hear?”
“The reply is nothing. You’re not pondering, ‘ Did I open the storage? Did I flip the range off?’ You’re concentrating on this portray. You’re focusing, and that’s the way in which to heal.”
The gratitude and appreciation from his college students, their households and the general public touched Melillo deeply — a far cry from the tough actuality troopers acquired when the US pulled out of Vietnam in 1973.
Whereas briefly at an Oakland base proper after coming back from Asia — simply two weeks earlier than his publish exterior Saigon grew to become overrun — the home terror group Climate Underground planted explosives in close by barracks.
“That was our welcome again,” he mentioned.
It took him many years to really feel respect — as attitudes towards those that served within the unpopular warfare have slowly shifted.
Melillo mentioned over the previous three years he has lastly seen an amazing “outpouring of thankfulness” for him and different Vietnam vets.
Melillo was stuffed with pleasure in October when he was given a thunderous standing ovation because the New York Islanders’ navy hero throughout the staff’s dwelling opener.
“I didn’t assume that was conceivable,” he mentioned.
“The thanks I get, I don’t take for myself. I go that out to all the guys.”
