Big boys should cry.

That's the message today's Neighbourhood Hero has been delivering to high school students over the past few months.

Although he looks forward to speaking to students and any other interested groups, today's "hero" prefers to remain anonymous in this column - We'll call him Robert.

Robert became a sailor at the age of 15, a sailor who had been taught that big boys DON'T cry, a sailor who believed that fears and emotions should be hidden away somewhere in the back of the brain, never to be discussed.

Years later this belief nearly cost him his life.

At the age of 17, Robert's ship was chartered to the USSR and ran primarily between Russia and Cuba. At first they carried general cargo and later, unknown to them ... missiles.

In April of 1961, he found himself in the "Bay of Pigs" as the American backed forces invaded Cuba.

This was his first look at death ... up close.

"I was filled with shock, disbelief, fear and anger," he says, "but I just put it to the back of my mind and never talked about it."

Years passed, Robert went back to school for four years and became a Marine Engineer, an engineer who still believed that "Big boys don't cry".

Then, in 1967, he found himself on a ship in the Suez Canal when the Six Day War broke out. They were the last ones to get out of the canal and had to ram a half sunken ship to escape. The ship behind them didn't make it.

You can imagine how scared the whole crew must have been but of course Robert never talked about how he felt.

A short while later, going north through he Straight of Bosporus, a tanker filled with jet fuel collided with another ship and a ferry.

This story is complicated but the strongest image that remains in Robert's mind is the face of a small boy struggling in the water and looking up silently pleading for help as a wave of burning fuel swept over him.

"If someone had pulled my guts out of me, it wouldn't have hurt as much as this," Robert told me with tears filling his eyes.

But of course, all the emotions attached to this event went to that same place at the back of his brain.

Robert's next ship was chartered by the Americans to transport supplies during the Viet Nam War. Need I tell you that this was an emotional, fear-filled period of his life? And by now, I'm sure you can guess what he did with those fears and emotions?

Over the next few years, Robert found himself married with two sons and a pregnant wife while spending most of his time away from home working as the Chief Engineer on an Ultra Large Crude Carrier, a ship that makes air craft carriers look small.

Home to take care of his sons while his wife had their baby, Robert had the worst experience of his life. Within eleven days, his third son was born, his 15-month old son died in his arms unexpectedly, and his oldest son was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes and nearly died.

All these emotions too, were stuffed along with the others at the back of his mind.

These events led to the family leaving Europe and moving to Vancouver Island and some years after that, an emotional breakdown.

Finally the big boy cried ... and got healthy.

There is much more to this story than I can tell in this space but it's a story that, when heard, just might save a lot of suffering ... or perhaps even a life.