SWFL father desperately searches for art made by son who lost battle with PTSD

A Southwest Florida father is desperately looking for a very special piece of art. It’s the memory of his son—a military hero who recently lost his fight with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

John Harry Mavrogeorge sings a song for his late son, “All I know is deep inside…I’m breaking.”

You can hear his pain in every word, every note.

His son lived his final days in pain.

“I just can’t seem to stop the tears I cry,” Mavrogeorge sings.

“He was a good man and I just miss him,” he said.

Timothy John, the youngest of his six children, served in the U.S. Army. He killed himself last month, ending his ongoing fight with PTSD.

“Take your rest now, my precious son,” Mavrogeorge sings. “It’s alright. I’ll see you on the other side.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to live without my son. He’s my baby,” he said. “When you first open your eyes in the morning, it feels like a normal day and it just smacks you in the head again and you’re like, ‘My God, is this real?’ It’s a nightmare.”

Timothy John graduated from Lorenzo Walker Technical College in Naples.

It was there that he made several art pieces.

Many of them sit in Mavrogeorge’s backyard, like a bug he made out of a shovel.

But there is one sculpture that Mavrogeorge doesn’t have and desperately wants to find. It’s a gladiator—the first Timothy John ever made.

He sold it a couple months before his death.

“He wanted to give me the gladiator and I told him, ‘No. I mean, you can always make something for me later on,’ and I could never imagine he wouldn’t ever get the chance to do it,” said Mavrogeorge.

He doesn’t know who owns the gladiator now, but he hopes he can find them and bring the sculpture home.

“I don’t know what they paid for it, but basically, it’s priceless to me and I don’t know if I’m ever going to see it again,” he said.

But while he waits, he sings: “I’ve got to keep your memory alive…inside my mind.”

Mavrogeorge says, “it’s a pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.”

If you have or might know who owns the gladiator, you can contact Mavrogeorge on his Facebook page.

Writer: Briana Harvath

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