(Tribune News Service) — Marine Corps veteran John Decoteau boats Lake Norman, N.C., every chance he gets.

The 49-year-old Mississippi native has known countless combat veterans through military recruiting for Universal Technical Institute and military service, and nothing calms them more than being on the water, he said.

“If you talk about the combat vets, man, they’ve been through a lot,” Decoteau told two Charlotte Observer journalists Wednesday as he steered a Bennington Tritoon on the lake from Freedom Boat Club, off West Catawba Avenue, where he’s a member.

He said too many veterans die by suicide every day in the U.S.

“There’s a lot of pressure in life,” he said. “There’s so much noise in the world, so much that goes on” that it’s difficult to adjust post-combat, despite people thanking them for their service.

“So when you get out on a place like this, it allows you to calm your mind and spirit,” he said. “It puts you in a tranquil place where you can get rid of the bad thoughts.”

“We caught it, grew it or shot it”

Decoteau was 12 when he appeared at his local Marine recruiting station wanting to join the service.

He’s from Ocean Springs, Miss., “probably about a pitching wedge off the Gulf of Mexico,” near Biloxi, he said.

His family survived on the fish they caught.

Decoteau learned to swim as an infant, when his dad cleaned crawfish in his kiddie pool. In diapers, he swam from the crawfish that tried to bite him, he said.

At age 5 or 6, he filled mullet nets with his dad in the Mississippi Sound, “to catch what they called Biloxi Bacon,” he said.

“We would go in the bayous to catch bass. We would go in what you’d call the brackish water, where it’s half-salt, half-fresh, and we would fish with chicken necks or turkey legs for blue crabs and go flounder giggin’.”

“I mean, you name it,” Decoteau said. “We generally caught it, grew it or shot it.”

Due to a severe ankle injury in high school, the Marine Corps wouldn’t accept him at first. He was 17 and the first member of his family in three generations to graduate high school.

The Marines granted him a waiver after he “cold-called” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi.

“I’m captain of my football team,” he told the longtime senator. “I’m a power lifter.”

“You fight for the things that are important to you,” he told the Observer.

Decoteau served from 1994 to 2002, the first five years with a helicopter squadron at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune. He was deployed to Bosnia and Albania between 1997 and 1999.

“I was in an embarkation role, helping Marines plan where they were going,” he said. “The last time I left the U.S., I got 4,500 Marines from New York to New Orleans to Norway and back.”

Marine Corps “changed my family’s life”

Decoteau’s last rank was staff sergeant.

“For me, being able to take care of veterans is a life passion project, because the military changed me in ways I can never describe,” he said. “It literally changed the economic outlook, the spiritual outlook of my entire family.”

As a military recruiter for UTI, he travels around the county to the school’s 15 campuses. The school trains students in automotive technology, electronics, industrial maintenance and many other trades, landing them well-paying jobs at BMW and other companies.

Decoteau also partners with Indy and NASCAR team owner Roger Penske on a diesel program at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, that trains active military to tear down and rebuild engines for eventual private industry jobs. Penske owns Mooresville-based Team Penske, among the first NASCAR teams in Mooresville, known as “Race City USA.”

He’s been in the Charlotte area since 2005, because “this is where my network was as a nationally ranked recruiter,” he said.

The Marines taught him the skills for the job, he said.

“I owe my entire life to the Marine Corps,” he said. “It literally changed the trajectory of my entire family. Taught my mom how to read and write. I come from a super-poor family, and my kid just graduated from the University of South Carolina debt free.”

Kiley — the only child of Decoteau and his wife, Robyn — is 22. She graduated from Lake Norman Charter School in Huntersville, N.C., and recently married a member of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.

After their daughter graduated high school, the Decoteaus had more time to spend on their duck boat on the Catawba River below Mountain Island Lake, John Decoteau said.

The couple has been married 23 years. Robyn Decoteau is a registered nurse who teaches health at Hickory Ridge High School in Harrisburg.

Seeking to upgrade the type of boat they were in, they tried rental pontoons before discovering Freedom Boat Club two years ago. The club owns the boats and does all the maintenance and filling up.

Plus, it has hundreds of locations nationwide available to members, John Decoteau said.

“It’s like owning a boat wherever you go,” he said. “The cost is very inexpensive, and they give veterans a discount. On my duck boat, it cost $800 to get the axles re-greased.”

Being on the Catawba River and Lake Norman reminds him of home, John Decoteau said. “All the trees, the nature,” he said. “The peace and quiet, the tranquility.”

“There’s a smoothness to it, where it makes it feel like the world slows down,” he said.

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