He’s on a new mission.
A Long Island veteran who fought in Vietnam has found a passion for painting to fight his own battles with PTSD — and is now teaching the artform to help heal other soldiers struggling with the affliction.
“I wasn’t only getting nightmares. I was getting daymares,” 78-year-old John Melillo, a former military police sergeant, told The Post of his trauma.
“The Vietnam guys are tough … but I’ll hear from their relatives. A wife will say, ‘he’s talking now, he never talked about this stuff before.’”
Melillo’s methods are based on his own struggles, having witnessed horrific atrocities overseas once being drafted shortly after graduating from Cornell in the late 1960s.
The burning images seared into his mind from Saigon stayed with him once he returned to the US, during stints in marketing and sales — all the while keeping the disorder internalized. He wasn’t diagnosed with PTSD until more than 45 years after serving in the Army.
“I couldn’t get in an elevator, I couldn’t get out of bed,” Melillo, of Eastport, said.
“I mean, I was just floored.”
The burden only worsened once he reached his golden years, but in scrambling to find ways to cope he discovered a life-changing talent for the brush.
“I never drew a straight line before,” said Melillo. “It was a gift from God. He saw I was struggling.
“He saw I was in big trouble, because I really was.”
Melillo began illustrating East End landscapes and scenes he captured on film while serving in Vietnam, which gave him an entirely new arsenal to fight his demons.
His works are currently on display at the Westhampton and Hampton Bays libraries, in addition to a handful of Starbucks on the South Fork — one even made the cover of the November issue of Dan’s Papers.
Fighting a new battle
The ex-soldier paints and focuses on the bright spots of humanity he photographed during the conflict, such as an orphanage that took in children on both sides of the fighting.
“So you talk about people doing the wrong things, here’s somebody doing the right things,” he said.
“I wanted to immortalize that.”
He also etched a touching portrait of King, an Army dog with whom Melillo became incredibly close with. King saved his life on multiple occasions, including in an instance when the sergeant discovered he was walking through a minefield.
“He sniffed us out of the whole place,” Melillo said of his canine companion, who also 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 want to be positive about this.”
Melillo honed his craft enough to instruct other veterans on how to paint nearly three years ago.
He does an exercise in class and has the painters suddenly halt in the middle of their work, asking, “What do you hear?”
“The answer is nothing. You’re not thinking, ‘ Did I open the garage? Did I turn the stove off?’ You’re concentrating on this painting. You’re focusing, and that’s the way to heal.”
The gratitude and appreciation from his students, their families and the public touched Melillo deeply — a far cry from the harsh reality soldiers received when the US pulled out of Vietnam in 1973.
While temporarily at an Oakland base right after returning from Asia — just two weeks before his post outside Saigon became overrun — the domestic terror group Weather Underground planted explosives in nearby barracks.
“That was our welcome back,” he said.
It took him decades to feel appreciate — as attitudes toward those who served in the unpopular war have slowly shifted.
Melillo said over the past three years he has finally seen an overwhelming “outpouring of thankfulness” for him and other Vietnam vets.
Melillo was filled with joy in October when he was given a thunderous standing ovation as the New York Islanders’ military hero during the team’s home opener.
“I didn’t think that was conceivable,” he said.
“The thank you I get, I don’t take for myself. I pass that out to all of the guys.”
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