From USMC machine gunner to ‘Flamethrower’ for Christ

After graduating from high school in 1966, Dennis Puleo joined the Marines. For 11 months, he carried a machine gun through the jungles of Vietnam.

In late April, 1967, on Hill 861 in Khe Sahn, he laid severely wounded in a pool of his own blood. On that day, he desperately cried out to God.

“I really only knew OF God,” said Puleo, “I never knew Him in any personal way. My prayer really consisted of no more than begging. I was dying and I knew it. What did I have to loose?”

During his service in Vietnam, Puleo received three purple hearts. He was shot twice, hit by a hand grenade and torn apart by an 81mm mortar. He was put back together with 400 stainless steel sutures and he spent a year in and out of V.A. Hospitals.

After his discharge and recovery, Dennis married his high school sweetheart and started his own security business at age 25.

Success came easily. A “large” personality enabled him to recruit; train and motivate many sales types. He transformed his simple home-based business into a multi-million dollar system.

“Although I had achieved the success nobody in my family ever had, I still felt empty, unsatisfied, and unfulfilled,” said Puleo. “Even though I owned the finest cars, a beautiful home, a lake-front cottage, boats, motorcycles, snowmobiles and office buildings, I was still unsatisfied. All the toys––all the material things that I was so sure would satisfy my soul––just came up short. At age 34, I had become trapped in a self-made cycle of work hard––earn money––and pay bills.”

“I would buy things I couldn’t afford with the money I didn’t really have to impress the people I actually didn’t like,” he said. “It seemed like I was always angry with my wife and children. I became unpredictable and volatile, and I never really knew why.”

“My wife and kids were actually beginning to dislike me. The problem was––they weren’t the only ones. There was no balance in my life and certainly no joy.”

The first transforming experience

It was at a couple’s house in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the fall of 1980 that Puleo finally surrendered to God.

“We hardly knew this young couple; Peter and Nancy McFarlane,” said Puleo, “but they possessed something I really wanted. They had peace of mind and some sense of inner joy which I had never experienced.”

“I was transformed after a simple prayer,” he said. “Many bad habits fell away, and my heart was supernaturally changed. I felt as if a huge burden was lifted off my back. I was set free. For the first time, I understood the difference between praying and begging; and the difference between religion and a personal relationship.”

When traveling for business after the White Mountain experience, his daughter would hide her stuffed smurf doll in his luggage. As she kissed him goodbye, she’d say to her new Christian dad, “Don't forget who you are!”

He again began to focus on business, and in no time at all, he and Joanne built the largest residential security business in New England, with 40 dealers in six states and sales in excess of $5 million. One year later he moved to Maryland to become vice president of franchise sales for the national distributor, and by 1989 he was named chief operating officer with 134 franchisees and $25 million in sales. Puleo was featured in Success Magazine, and he was a speaker at several conventions and universities on topics of entrepreneurship, customer service, and creative marketing.

He joined the board for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington D.C., and he helped assemble a team of people to sponsor an Olympic bob sled team.

Bad habits and vulgar language return

During this time, Puleo said some of his old habits began to creep back into his life again. Once a good friend took him aside and warned him not to use vulgar language in front of his boys. “I was unbelievably embarrassed, but I just brushed it off, quietly avoided him, and tried to act as though it never happened,” said Puleo.

At age 52, Puleo and his wife, Joanne, sold their home and bought a 50-foot Hatteras motor yacht to cruise from Maine to Florida––a three-year vacation.

One day his dock master said, “I saw you in church Sunday. I didn’t know you were a Christian.” “My heart sank,” said Puleo. “I had lost my first love, and I knew it. Patterns of sin (selfishness, arrogance, and pride) had easily worked their way back into my life; or as my daughter would say: ‘I forgot who I was.’ It was becoming apparent to me that I was failing in my attempt to be a ‘Lone Ranger Christian.’”

But even this event didn’t change Puleo’s life style. He brushed off the experience, fired up his diesel engines and cruised the intra-coastal waters for the next three years.

The former Marine responds to a challenge

It was on a business trip to Orlando that a man invited Puleo to attend Pat Morley's Friday morning Bible study where he was given a copy of The Man in the Mirror book.

“The book resonated with me,” said Puleo. “I realized that I had become a cultural Christian, and I wasn’t really committed. Although I knew I was going to heaven as a believer and follower of Christ, I was actually living a double life. I felt like the dog that returns to his vomit.

“I couldn't put that book down,” said Puleo. “I knew I was not living an authentic life, and Pat challenged me to live a life of significance, love my wife as I once did, and give to others as I never had before.”

Puleo says he got on his knees and made things right with God––“Right there- all alone in my boat.” He told God, “From this day forward, if you’re not in it, I’m not interested.”

Eventually, he ended up selling the boat and moving to Orlando where he now serves as a faculty member and director of the Chairman’s Advisory Council for the Man in the Mirror.

 “As a salesman and entrepreneur, I have sold every product imaginable, but not one with the guarantee of peace of mind now and an everlasting life later,” he concluded.