From Heartbreak to Hope on Long Island

“There is life after injury, not the life you thought, but a quality of life.”

~Allyson Barone Scerri

Allyson Barone Scerri once believed her life would be simple.

Born in Lake Ronkonkoma and raised in Remsenburg, she graduated from Westhampton Beach High School and went on to beauty school. “All I wanted to do was be married and do hair,” she told me with a soft laugh. She married her childhood sweetheart. They built a life in Center Moriches. They had two beautiful children through IVF. She worked in local salons and from home. It was the life she had imagined.

Until tragedy rewrote everything.

In 1991, when Allyson was pregnant with her son, her mother, Linda Jean, was killed in a devastating car accident on Montauk Highway. An illegal U-turn caused the vehicle to roll. The cause of death was a traumatic brain injury. She was just 49 years old. Her father survived the crash physically unharmed but emotionally devastated. He carried survivor’s guilt for decades.

“It was my biggest tragedy,” Allyson says quietly. “It was a nightmare.”

She was becoming a mother herself and had just lost her own.

Sixteen years later, on February 7, 2007, heartbreak struck again.

Allyson was shopping at Target when she returned to her car and saw 22 missed calls. Her father had been in Florida waiting for friends to arrive for a weekend trip. While waiting, he decided to take his motorcycle out for a ride. One of his friends called Allyson to let her know that her dad was in a horrific accident and that emergency brain surgery was taking place as they spoke. His friend sadly expressed that her father might not make it. She packed immediately and flew to Florida with her sister.

Her father survived but remained hospitalized for 16 weeks, seven of those in a coma he emerged from on his own. Eventually, he was medevacked to St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson to be closer to family.

But he was no longer the same man. “There were two dads,” she tells me. “Before and after.”

The successful builder who owned Drop More Construction in Coram, a strong, capable, commanding man, was now wheelchair-bound, volatile, and altered by severe brain trauma. He forgot his wife had died years earlier. He relived grief. He became angry and unpredictable.

“I felt everything he felt,” Allyson says. “It was hard for us to see him this way.”

“I would not put him in a nursing home.” She brought her father to live with her and her family. She stopped working. She became his full-time caregiver. She pushed him through physical therapy. She advocated. She fought for his dignity when he could not fight for himself.

By then, another chapter of her life had unfolded. Her first marriage had ended. She had remarried and, for the past 28 years, has shared her life in East Quogue with her second husband, a builder.

And it was he who changed everything.

One day, he said to her, “Why don’t you build your own traumatic brain center?” “My husband encourages what he sees in me,” she says.

He saw her strength. Her persistence. Her refusal to surrender. He saw purpose where she saw pain. Then something ignited.

With her daughter handling the paperwork with the Town of Brookhaven and her husband drawing the blueprints himself, they found an old warehouse in Medford and converted it into a licensed nonprofit medical facility. “We were obsessed to get this done.”

In April 2013, New Beginnings Community Center opened its doors offering physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and structured day programs all led by professionals.

Allyson knew something essential was missing from traditional facilities. “The biggest part of what we do is socialization,” she says. So, she added a hair salon.

“When you look good, you feel good. Because healing is not only clinical. It’s human.”

Then came Brendan House.

An abandoned building was donated in memory of a young man named Brendan who had died from a brain injury. It needed to be demolished and rebuilt. For six years, Allyson fundraised tirelessly, raising one million dollars through donations and events. She even hired inmates from Riverhead Jail to assist with renovations giving them purpose while rebuilding something meaningful.

In May 2017, Brendan House opened as the first shared living residence of its kind, a place where traumatic brain injury survivors could maintain independence while receiving 24/7 nursing care.

And still, she didn’t stop.

In 2025, three additional residences opened in Wading River:

• Amber Haven — a serene residential facility for individuals with TBI, ALS, and neurological disorders, surrounded by nature where deer and wild turkeys roam
• The Alfred Francis Building — named for her father, an all-male residence
• The Linda Jean Building — named for her mother, an all-female residence

“It was an ultimate dream to name the buildings after my parents,” she says.

Her father passed away at 75. He was 67 at the time of his accident.

“This is his legacy,” she tells me.

Through fundraisers, galas, food drives with a no-questions-asked approach, and even organizing cruises for caregivers and the disabled, Allyson continues to build community around those who often feel isolated.

“I don’t want anyone to go through what I did,” she says. “Let me help you.”

“There is life after injury. Not the life you imagined. Not the life you planned. But a life with dignity, care, and community.”

Because one daughter refused to surrender, that life now exists for countless families right here on Long Island.

Some women dream of building a business. Others are called to build something much deeper.

Allyson built hope from heartbreak. She built a community from grief. She built a legacy from love. In doing so, she proved that sometimes destiny isn’t something we choose. Sometimes it chooses us.