Page 16 - MyCottleville Magazine Jan/Feb 2017

continued from page 15 - American Hero Calls Cottleville Home
It would be a woman who would change everything for the damaged war hero. McDaris met Nikki McDaris on October 2, 2004, in Louisville, Ky. She told him early on, he said, “’Either you get help, or I’m leaving,’” John McDaris said. “Eleven years later and she’s still my wife.”
John had major depression and survivor’s guilt when he returned to the states. “It was from the relationship with these men. You are closer than your parents, your brothers. When something happens to one of these men, you carry it home and you can’t let it go. It’s been 14 years since my buddy died in Mosul, and I still hate the month of September. Mental health is such an important issue and military and civilian culture is nally seeing that.”
But the mental health issues weren’t the only disorders John would face after the Iraq War. He was working in the recruiting of ce in St. Peters in 2014 when he collapsed. “I said something funny and we started laughing. The next thing I remember I woke up in the ambulance.”
John was suffering from a Chiari malformation, a condition in which brain tissue extends into the spinal canal. He would un- dergo brain surgery where his skull would be shaved and cadaver skin would be used to sort of tie up the brain, he said.
John said the injury was caused from all of the concussions he suffered from IED (improvised explosive device) blasts during his deployments. He survived quite a few of them.
Friends and military comrades from all over the world came to see John while he was in the hospital following the nine-hour surgery. But it was his wife’s strength that left him breathless. And if there were any medals for wives, John said Nikki would earn top honors. “My wife is the epitome of what strength is. If I could be as poised and calm as she is in adversity, I would be ne.
She is the perfect combination of my mother and my grandmother, the two greatest women I’ve ever known. She takes my breath away. She saved my life.”
Today John volunteers at Pathway Community Hospice, and serves on the Missouri Gateway Chapter of the 101st Airborne Division Association. He visits veterans’ homes across the state, honoring them with a nal salute and a presentation of the American ag.
John and Nikki hope to adopt a child soon, the dream of a man who speaks of his own father and fellow Army veteran, Ted McDaris, with considerable regard. “Other than Jesus Christ, my dad is the second greatest man who ever walked the earth.”
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