GUEST FAMILY
PROFILE: The Catinna Family Story by Allan Johnson
Photos by Ashley Estill
NAME: Nick Catinna VI HOUSE: James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital Fisher House, Tampa, FL HOME STATE: Kentucky MILITARY BRANCH: U.S. Coast Guard
Nick Catinna VI almost waited too long, or maybe his awakening nearly came too late. Either way, when he began training to be a rescue swimmer with the Coast Guard, he was older than everybody in the program and liable to be cut from the final roster simply because of the impressive quality of the other candidates. But Nick wanted to help people. That’s why he had left his job in a law office and joined the Coast Guard at 27. He transferred to search and rescue/search and recovery because their motto — “So others may live”— impressed him. “He was involved in a number of saves,” his mother, Jan Catinna, said, while he was serving in Northern California, “but he was honorably discharged because of his PTSD.” It was after that, when Nick was a young veteran living in Daytona Beach, FL, that he had the accident that has led, after a long coma and many months in different hospitals, to the polytrauma unit at Tampa’s James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital.
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THE PATRIOT • VOLUME 10 • ISSUE 2 • 2019
