Submitted photo Carl Nunziato of Boardman, who did two tours of duty in Vietnam, holds a Vietnam Service Medal he received for his service in the U.S. Army. Nunziato lost both legs in a 1966 mortar attack and has worked tirelessly on behalf of veterans with disabilities.

BOARDMAN — Even though he lost both legs during combat in the Vietnam War, Maj. Carl A. Nunziato continues to leave his footprints throughout much of the Mahoning Valley.

“I had to get VA (Veterans Administration) treatment and I said, ‘Where do I go? I want to see a doctor,'” and they said, ‘You’ll have to go to the Cleveland or Butler (Pa.) VA,” remembered Nunziato, an Army veteran who conducted two tours of duty in Vietnam.

In early 1966, during his second tour, the Boardman man fought in Operation Adelborough during which about 10,000 soldiers conducted a 10-week sweep into a war zone between Saigon and the Cambodian border that had a heavy Viet Cong and North Vietnamese presence. After pushing enemies out of the region at the end of the operation, Nunziato ran across a field about 10 p.m. one evening to get to an armored personnel carrier when a mortar shell blew up about 2 feet from him, after which he had both legs amputated and spent 23 months at Walter Reed Hospital recovering from his injuries.

Rather than succumbing to despair, the decorated Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient decided education was the best way to cope, so he studied from his bedside, took an entrance exam to study law before receiving his degree from Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law in 1971.

His wounds also placed Nunziato on a path to reach out to and ardently advocate for veterans with disabilities. To that end, he and a few others were instrumental in helping establish the Veterans Outpatient Clinic on Belmont Avenue on Youngstown’s North Side in the early 1990s, which serves about 45,000 veterans annually. He also is playing a pivotal role in the construction of a new larger 35,000-square-foot clinic in the same area.

In addition, Nunziato, who earned a bachelor’s degree in English and education in 1961, was a co-founder of the Youngstown chapter of the Governor’s Subcommittee for Barrier Free Architecture and has spent about 15 years ensuring the Mahoning County courthouse, hospitals and other buildings are accessible to those with wheelchairs.

In May 2018, the Veterans Resource Center on Wick Avenue was renamed in his honor, and Nunziato helped establish the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Youngstown’s Central Square, on which are the names of 104 Mahoning County soldiers who lost their lives in the Vietnam War.

During his first tour of Vietnam in 1965 for which he volunteered, he was a senior lieutenant commander of door gunners who flew helicopters with 300 men under him in seven locations throughout the country. In addition, he helped defend perimeters around some air bases and smaller camps as an intelligence officer and commander.

After that, Nunziato, who was an artillery batter commander with the 25th Division, returned to Hawaii — where he was training a unit — when he got an alert and ordered to return to Vietnam to assist the infantry in Ku-Chi, he said.

“I had 200 men, and we were two to five miles behind the infantry,” said Nunziato, who also served a tour of duty in the jungles of Thailand near the Mekong River during the Laotian crisis — something he called “a political show of force.”

After an honorable discharge in 1968, Nunziato practiced law and served close to 30 years in the banking industry. He worked for Dollar Savings & Trust Co., National City Bank and Ohio Bancorp.

His civilian service has entailed supporting veterans in a variety of ways. Those also include as an Easter Seals Society trustee, state chairman of the Governor’s Council for Disabled Persons, chairman of the Youngstown / Warren Regional Chamber’s Military Affairs Committee, as well as past president of YSU’s ROTC Alumni Association, with an ROTC scholarship named after him.