Darren DeGraw, Manville and PTSD

Sometimes post-traumatic-stress disorder can take years to manifest itself. For Darren DeGraw, my Point Pleasant Boro High classmate from 1985, it took 11.

Darren was 39 when he died in 2006 in Lake Worth, Fla., of possible heart failure, according to The Princeton Packet. But what happened in 1995, shortly after joining the Manville, N.J. police force, may have been what ultimately did him in.

Darren, who had also lived in Barnegat, resigned on June 30, 2005 from the Manville force because of the PTSD he suffered from following a 1995 shooting, his ex-wife, Donna DeGraw, once told The Princeton Packet.

Even as he suffered, he apparently showed the same leadership spirit he had as a high school student, hoping to revive a community that had a wrecked economy and a population that suffered from a debilitating and deadly illness.

But there is only so much a person can do to save themselves, especially when they face the tragedy of depression and trauma that not only affects those around them. Mental illness is often a force bigger than ourselves. For Darren, it was a force that - despite the good life he led - was too big to conquer.

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