Billy Zarbolias: ‘I became reckless’

“I shot at the flashes in the woods and they were shooting at me,’’ he said, recalling how he held his finger down on his gun and sprayed the shoreline as the boat moved to safety. “I never actually saw what I hit. But I’m pretty sure I was hitting things.’’

Back then he had never heard of post-traumatic stress disorder. He returned to Haverhill, where he was a household name: He had been a track star in high school, and just missed qualifying for the 1964 US Olympic team. After a few years of construction work, he settled into a job as a cook in the early 1970s and tried to forget about the war and the shooting and the flashes that came from the shore.

He knew he had changed but couldn’t articulate how.

“I became more reckless,’’ he said.

He married but still went out clubbing on weekends. Alone.

As the decades moved on, he started to drink more. His marriage fell apart, and by 1999 he would wake up with a glass of whiskey. Around that time, he quit his $50,000-a-year cook’s job at a local nursing home and figured he’d take it easy for a few weeks before getting another job.

“I not only drank every day, I drank all day,’’ he said.

He took his savings and started spending. He bought rounds of drinks every time he stepped into a bar. He started to gamble, and went through tens of thousands of dollars in a few months.

“I went from a $2 to a $100 bettor because of the booze,’’ he said.

For four years he slept on his ex-wife’s couch and at his girlfriends’ apartments. And, finally, when nobody else would take him in and when the money was gone, he walked into a Haverhill homeless shelter. He stayed for about 90 days and then heard about a Veterans Administration program in Bedford that had a detox facility. After 90 days of sobriety, he left Bedford and was sent to transitional housing at the Veterans Northeast Outreach Center in Haverhill. When the center’s cook moved away six months later, Zarbolias was given the job, and took the old cook’s apartment across the street - also run by the center. He has been a center resident for four years.

“One thing’s for sure: If I didn’t come here, I would have been dead,’’ Zarbolias said, speaking in the basement kitchen where he prepares more than 8,000 meals a year.

While he wonders if his life would have been different if he hadn’t gone to Vietnam, he doesn’t blame his problems on his military service. Now 63, he’s setting other goals. He wants to keep cooking at the center, but he said he hopes to move into a bigger apartment. The thought of becoming homeless again keeps him sober and focused, he said.

On Veterans Day, he plans to cook hundreds of pounds of pot roast for the vets. Said Zarbolias: “They’re meat-and-potato guys.’’