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- A Marine vet spent decades creating a carousel to conquer his demons and help others</p>
<p>Steve Hartman July 19, 2025 at 9:43 AM</p>
<p>CBS News</p>
<p>Nederland, Colorado — During the height of the Vietnam War, being stationed at U.S. Marine outpost Con Thien was like a death sentence.</p>
<p>"It just seemed like a matter of time for everybody," retired Marine Cpl. Scott Harrison told CBS News.</p>
<p>Harrison, then just 19 years old, says he got through those dark days, thanks in no small part, to a music box his sister had sent to him.</p>
<p>During breaks in the fighting, he used to hold it tight to his ear.</p>
<p>"And I would close my eyes, and I would think of a carousel in a mountain meadow," Harrison said. "…An image totally opposite of where people are trying to kill each other."</p>
<p>Harrison says that delicate tinkling of a simpler time lowered his adrenaline and tempered the brutality. Eventually, he was wounded, evacuated, and reintegrated into civilian life.</p>
<p>Harrison left Vietnam in 1968, but the war never left him. He battled post-traumatic stress disorder with alcohol, and at one point, tried living alone on a boat on the ocean, but nothing worked. And that is when he circled back to that carousel vision, that one he conjured so long ago.</p>
<p>"I thought that if I could actually start making that vision come true, it would keep me on an even keel and make me happier," Harrison said.</p>
<p>So, Harrison bought a broken-down carousel and brought it to Nederland, Colorado, in 1986. For the next 26 years, he carved brand-new animals for it.</p>
<p>The carousel opened to the public in 2010, in a mountain valley in Nederland, just like the one Harrison had envisioned — a carousel like none you've ever seen.</p>
<p>Harrison helped establish the Carousel of Happiness, a nonprofit whose mission is simply to spread joy. Over the past 15 years it has delighted more than one million people. It's also profoundly changed Harrison's life.</p>
<p>"Absolutely, everyday, just to go to that carousel and see everybody having such a great time, is good medicine for me," Harrison said. "Because I started out trying to treat myself, and then it just changed into something that I could do for others."</p>
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