New device aids Bellmorite who suffers from disfluency

Five years ago, people might have had a difficult time understanding when North Bellmore native John Scalesi spoke. But thanks to a new device, Scalesi, 53, who suffers from disfluency, or stuttering, can now be heard loud and clear.

Scalesi, a Mepham High School graduate, was diagnosed as disfluent at age 6. Over time, and through the work of speech pathologists, Scalesi got to a point where he said he was "90 percent fine." With his ability to control the disfluency, Scalesi joined the Army as a military police officer in 1977.

Scalesi, who said he grew up with an alcoholic father, never had what he considered a stable childhood at his house, but he was able to find a home nearby. When he was about 10 years old, John Skulnick, a former North Bellmore Fire Department chief, brought Scalesi into the firehouse. Scalesi said he had always chased fire trucks with his bicycle and couldn't have been more thrilled to be taken in under the fireman's wing. Scalesi attributes a lot of his ability to overcome his hardships in life to the North Bellmore Fire Department. "I spent most of my young life at the firehouse," he said. "They were almost like a mom and dad to me."

Aside from Skulnick, Scalesi credits John June, Angelo Catalono, Bob Podolski, and Al Walther for making the firehouse a home.

While Scalesi was in training for the Army at Fort Dix in New Jersey, he was exposed to a preemptive explosion; the blast triggered a relapse in Scalesi's disfluency and he was granted an honorable discharge.

No longer with the Army, Scalesi set about searching for another job. Naturally, he was drawn back to the fire department and decided to take a job as an EMT at Nassau University Medical Center. Scalesi lived there and worked as an EMT until he took a job with the Nassau County Sheriff's Department, also as an EMT.