Nederland, Colorado — During the height of the Vietnam War, being stationed at U.S. Marine outpost Con Thien was like a death sentence.
“It just seemed like a matter of time for everybody,” retired Marine Cpl. Scott Harrison told CBS News.
Harrison, then just 19 years old, says he got through those dark days, thanks in no small part, to a music box his sister had sent to him.
During breaks in the fighting, he used to hold it tight to his ear.
“And I would close my eyes, and I would think of a carousel in a mountain meadow,” Harrison said. “…An image totally opposite of where people are trying to kill each other.”
Harrison says that delicate tinkling of a simpler time lowered his adrenaline and tempered the brutality. Eventually, he was wounded, evacuated, and reintegrated into civilian life.
Harrison left Vietnam in 1968, but the war never left him. He battled post-traumatic stress disorder with alcohol, and at one point, tried living alone on a boat on the ocean, but nothing worked. And that is when he circled back to that carousel vision, that one he conjured so long ago.
“I thought that if I could actually start making that vision come true, it would keep me on an even keel and make me happier,” Harrison said.
So, Harrison bought a broken-down carousel and brought it to Nederland, Colorado, in 1986. For the next 26 years, he carved brand-new animals for it.
The carousel opened to the public in 2010, in a mountain valley in Nederland, just like the one Harrison had envisioned — a carousel like none you’ve ever seen.
Harrison helped establish the Carousel of Happiness, a nonprofit whose mission is simply to spread joy. Over the past 15 years it has delighted more than one million people. It’s also profoundly changed Harrison’s life.
“Absolutely, everyday, just to go to that carousel and see everybody having such a great time, is good medicine for me,” Harrison said. “Because I started out trying to treat myself, and then it just changed into something that I could do for others.”
Steve Hartman is a CBS News correspondent. He brings viewers moving stories from the unique people he meets in his weekly award-winning feature segment “On the Road.”
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