Related: 'An artist paints his nightmares'

       Antonio Dattorro was an art teacher in the Providence school system for many years, and many times we had written about his devotion to students and their success as young artists.

       But Dattorro lived a tortured life, and in the early 1980s, when his body started to fail him, he put his private misery onto the canvas. His last art project ever was painting his days as a prisoner of war during World War II. Dattorro survived the Bataan Death March and more than three years in a prison camp. And for nearly 40 years, he buried the memories.

       Even after Dattorro finished the project, in 1985, no one knew about the paintings and drawings because he didn't show them to anyone. So the world saw his work only when a display opened recently at the Command Readiness Center, in Cranston, R.I. Photographer Rachel Ritchie took pictures at the opening, and the newspaper's West Bay office sent me the info on Dattorro for a possible story, so I did an embarrassingly small amount of work to get the story.

       I had heard from Dattorro's son, Anthony, and others that his father he often has a hard time talking about the past.

       Figuring I wouldn't get very much from Dattorro himself, I planned to rely mostly on our clips and information from friends and family. Our library staff helped a great deal, sending me news clippings covering several decades. One was particularly interesting: In 1941 we ran a tiny story, about 30 words, saying that Dattorro had sent his brother a telegram from the Philippines, telling him he was safe and the Filipinos were being protected. This was days before the Japanese invaded and Dattorro began the fight for his life.

       I had enough to write a decent story without even talking to Dattorro. But when I met him at his home in North Providence, he was much more helpful than I had expected.

       I talked to his son for a while, getting the basic outline of his father's experience _ names, dates, chronology _ as well as his son's thoughts on his father, what it was like growing up with him and how things have been in recent years.

       When I talked to Dattorro, I had most of the facts I needed, so I didn't have to bog him down with retelling specifics, which is what he seems to really have trouble with. Instead, I was able to ask him general questions about his experiences and his artwork. His responses were incredibly rich in emotion and intensity.

       He told me plenty, from watching his friends die to the sight of Hiroshima after the bomb fell to the confusion over why he was left alive to suffer while the lucky ones died early.

       The most powerful thing he told me, the words that made my breath catch, became the final quote of the story: "At my age now, I'm ready to die. I wish I could die."

       I briefly thought this would be too dark an ending. But, as I looked at his life and what he had told me, I saw it as the only ending. It sums up his life. It's not pleasant, but it's true.

       I started the story with his decision to paint his nightmares, to fill in the missing section of his life story. I dropped in the news about the art exhibit, and from there it was straight chronology. When someone tells you a story like that, it's pretty hard to screw it up.

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