NEW YORK
The Journal News
Jorge Fitz-Gibbon , jfitzgib@lohud.com May 30, 2017
One of the worst panic attacks for Peter Marghella came during the Gulf War as he sat in a military tent in the sweltering heat of Bahrain.
For Marghella, a highly decorated U.S. Navy medical officer, the 17 years that had lapsed since his encounter with the Rev. Kenneth O’Connell at an upstate New York Boy Scout camp had done little to quell his nightmares.
“I took out the pistol and I cocked it and I put it in my mouth,” Marghella said. “I was literally just about to pull the trigger when the command surgeon, who was in the room next to me, divided by a partition so he couldn’t see me, just started talking to me.”
“I can’t remember what it was,” he said. “It was just kind of innocuous banter. He talked with this kind of South Carolina drawl. And I just started to concentrate on what he was saying and I took the gun out of my mouth.”
It was the second near-suicide for Marghella, and it came seven years before he finally sought help and opened up about his childhood nightmare.
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