With help from inmates, future home for brain-injury survivors is ‘basically finished’ – with just one obstacle

The old farmhouse on Sound Avenue is alive with the noise of construction Wednesday morning: the whir of a saw, the scraping of spackle knives, punctuated by the sharp popping of a nail gun.

But the work being done at the Brendan House today looks a bit different from most other construction sites: Each of the 10 men working here is dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit.

“If it weren’t for these guys, we wouldn’t be anywhere close to where we are today,” says Allyson Scerri, executive director of New Beginnings, which will soon open a group home in this rustic two-story house. “It’s basically finished.”

The road to opening Long Island’s first home for survivors of traumatic brain injury has been long and fraught with obstacles, but it has been made a little bit shorter with help from a group of inmates from the Suffolk County Correctional Facility.

Almost every week for the past two and a half years, inmates from the sheriff’s Labor Assistance Program have worked tirelessly to restore the old farmhouse – laying down floors, spackling and painting walls, even tiling the bathrooms.

“We’re just trying to give back,” says Eric, an inmate from North Babylon who is installing molding on the walls of the dining room. “It’s just so satisfying. I don’t know the people who I’m going to be helping, but I know that they’re going to be very grateful for years to come.”

The program allows non-violent inmates with short-term sentences to volunteer their labor at non-profit organizations, like New Beginnings. Rather than sitting in a cell every day, this select group of inmates has the opportunity to work outside the jail under the supervision of corrections officers from the county sheriff’s office – and pick up some valuable skills along the way.

“All that idle time in jail is not good,” said Jim Tucciarone, a corrections officer supervising the crew. “They get a sense of accomplishment. When you leave each day, the people appreciate the work that you’ve done, and it gives them a good feeling.”

The program’s inmates also get to learn new trade skills that they can take with them into the outside world once their sentences are complete.

“You take a guy who’s never tiled in his life, and all the sudden he’s tiling a floor,” Tucciarone said. He recalled a former inmate who worked for several months at the Brendan House. “When he started with us, he knew nothing about landscaping. By the time he left, he wanted to open up a landscaping business.”

The program’s inmates have been responsible for “a bulk of” the work that has been completed on the Brendan House, Scerri says.

“It’s really the reason the house is getting done,” she said.

And thanks to their help, the future group home is nearly complete. The crew on Wednesday was busy putting the finishing touches on the house’s interior, but aside from a few odds and ends, all that’s left to do is move in the furniture.

“If we had the water hooked up, we could honestly open next week,” Scerri said.

But getting water to the old estate house is proving to be a bigger problem than anyone expected.

Over the summer, Scerri was slapped with an unexpected water hook-up fee of almost $50,000 from the town. Because the county won’t allow the Brendan House to use well water, it must be hooked up to the town’s water district – but the nearest line is located on the opposite side of the road.

Two months ago, that bill was reduced to $20,000 after Scerri received a phone call from the Riverhead Highway Superintendent George Woodson.

“He told me he couldn’t sleep at night knowing it’s holding us up,” she said.

The reason the original bill was so high, Woodson explained to her, is because the highway department has to tear up the road to run the water across the street, and the cost is meant to help mitigate the lawsuits that often come about as a result. “But he went to the town and gave them his blessing,” Scerri said. “It’s progress.”

It may sound like a lot of money to raise, but Scerri is the picture of optimism.

“We’ll find a way, just like everything else with the house,” she said. “We’re constantly thinking of ideas. We fundraised over $23,000 for the elevator, and it wasn’t easy, but I’m proud of that.”

And with the generous assistance of the inmates from the jail, the house is finally beginning to take shape into the long-term care facility Scerri first envisioned many years ago, when her own father suffered a traumatic brain injury.

“It will give the families some comfort,” she said, looking around the nearly completed kitchen. “No one should have to change their adult child’s diaper every day. A family member with a traumatic brain injury is a life sentence.”

One of the home’s future residents will be Riverhead’s own Michael Hubbard, who was only 14 years old when a citronella firepot explosion four years ago led to cardiac arrest. His brain was deprived of oxygen for 13 minutes, and when Michael emerged from his coma, he could no longer walk, stand or even speak.

Michael’s mother, Nancy Reyer, has hardly left his side in the years following his injury. He has come a long way in his recovery, but he still requires daily medical supervision, and though Peconic Bay Medical Center has been kind enough to offer him a temporary room at its skilled nursing facility, there is no long-term care option for him east of Queens.

“They’ll be able to live happy, fulfilling lives here,” Scerri said. “They’ll feel more independent than they would in a nursing home.”

Although Scerri’s father passed away last year of heart failure, she has not given up her dream – now nearly realized – of transforming the donated Sound Avenue home into a grandly restored long-term care facility.

“I honestly thought my father would be living here,” she said Wednesday. “But that’s what we’re here for as a community. To help the next person who is going through it. It doesn’t stop with him.”

New Beginnings is still seeking donations to pay for the water hook-up cost. Scerri is also requesting donated lunches from local restaurants and delis to feed the workers from the sheriff’s labor assistance program.

“They really appreciate what we’re doing here,” Scerri said, and Tucciarone agreed.

“The inmates realize what the house is for, and I think when they come here, they put a little extra into it,” he said.