NEWS | THE NORTHPORT RECORD, JANUARY 26, 2006

Northport Mourns It's Fallen Friend

Senior Jeffrey Conner, 17, dies after accident on Bellerose Avenue

By Michael R. Sisak / The Northport Record

Hundreds of students flowed out of Northport High School and stood solemnly on mist sodden sidewalks as the funeral procession for classmate Jeffrey Conner passed by, Monday afternoon.

Conner, a 17-year-old senior and co-captain of the varsity baseball team, died last Thursday at Huntington Hospital, less than an hour after an accident in which he lost control of his pickup truck and crashed while driving on Bellerose Avenue in East Northport.

"The school community has been devastated," principal Irene McLaughlin said, Monday afternoon. "The kids are feeling a terrible loss." 

Conner was a quiet and determined leader whose friendship transcended class and clique, his friends and coaches said. He is survived by his father John, his mother Jayne, a teacher aide at East Northport Middle School, his older brother John and older sister Jessica.

"Jeff is one of the kids that stands out because he does things right all the time," Todd Andrews, the assistant principal who oversees the senior class, said. "You had all different groups, you had kids who identified themselves through athletics or through the arts… and he was able to connect with all those different kinds of kids."

Nearly 1,000 people — mostly students, teachers and parents — attended a funeral mass for Conner, Monday morning at St. Anthony of Padua in East Northport. Hundreds more streamed into Nolan & Taylor-Howe Funeral Home during public viewings held on Saturday and Sunday.

Baseball teammates, Mike Dennis, Frank Reiman, Joe Patrone and Greg Thide served as pallbearers along with Eddie Lynch, a member of the varsity basketball team, and Jeff Hilgreen, Conner's closest friend. The high school choir performed the songs, "The Lamp," "I Shall Not Leave Thee Comfortless," and "On Eagle's Wings" and the Rev. John O'Farrell, who presided over the service, offered perspective during a brief soliloquy.

"To those of you of faith, you know that life has not ended," O'Farrell said. "It has changed, but not ended… Life is not measured by duration but by donation. At such a young age, Jeff made donations to his family, his school and his community."

Donations On the Field and Off

John DeMartini, the Northport baseball coach, and Jim DeRosa, his assistant, reminisced about Conner's contributions as a player and as a teammate in separate telephone conversations on Monday evening.

Last season, Conner drove in 18 runs, hit 3 home runs and batted for a .430 average. He was among the team leaders and earned all-league honors from the Suffolk County Baseball Coaches Association.

"Jeff's a really nice kid," DeMartini said, his thoughts of Conner not yet shifted to the past tense. "He has a pleasant personality. He always had a smile on his face."

DeMartini remembered the ingenuity Conner had as a catcher and the system he used to nab opposing runners who looked to steal.

"He had a thing going with our first baseman," DiMartini said. "When there was a runner on first base, they had some signals to pick off the runner. They were successful a number of times."

DeRosa, a social studies teacher who had Conner in a class last year, recalled Conner's offensive power and the determination he used to battle through a tough at-bat in a game at Hauppauge, early last season.

"It was typical Jeff," DeRosa said. "He looked overwhelmed. He fell behind in the count 0-2. He worked the count to 2-2. He got a pitch he could handle and drove it for a home run."

The ball traveled more than 400 feet.

"The thing I can pinpoint about Jeff on the baseball field was his consistency," DeRosa said. "He was a great catcher because he always stayed upbeat and positive no matter what the situation presented," DeRosa said. "He was very stable back there."

Jon Macaluso, Conner's guidance counselor, admired his humble nature.

"He wasn't loud or boisterous," Macaluso said. "He earned the respect of his peers and led by example. That goes for what happened in the classroom and what happened on the baseball field."

Conner hoped to continue his baseball career in college and had an interest in becoming a physical education teacher, Macaluso said. Conner applied to a shortlist of schools that included Hofstra, Cortland State, C.W. Post and Kent State.

Patrone, a friend of Conner's since the first grade and a teammate since Little League, saw a different side.

"He was very, very talkative to the team," Patrone said. "He was the joker of the team."

A Crash and a Chain of Calls

Conner's crash occurred at around 10:55 p.m., last Thursday, as he headed home from a part-time job at the Ruby Tuesday's restaurant in Commack.

Conner drove his 1999 Chevrolet pickup truck west on Bellerose Avenue, past the elementary school he attended and the ball fields he played on as a Little Leaguer, about a mile and a half from his home on Clarke Drive.

Just after a bend, about 1,500 feet from an intersection with Larkfield Road, Conner lost control. The truck flipped onto the driver's side, skidded across the dry pavement and smashed into a cyclone fence that guarded the front of 218 Bellerose, a property on the north side of the street. The fence was twisted to the ground and dropped into a bed of dry leaves in front of a grassy clearing that became littered with bits of broken glass.

The force of the impact righted the truck and sent it rolling backward, the Suffolk County Police said. It collided with a car parked nearby and came to a rest near the slight incline along the sidewalk where a vigil was held in Conner's memory on Friday night and where a makeshift memorial glowed with candles, photographs and dozens of bouquets of flowers over the weekend.

Conner, who had not been wearing a seatbelt, according to the police, was rushed by ambulance to Huntington Hospital. He was pronounced dead at about 11:45 p.m.

Word of the accident and Conner's death spread first among classmates who had friends or relatives that volunteered with the East Northport Fire Department and were privy to the intimate details of the tragedy. The news trickled across the community in telephone calls and bedside conversations.

McLaughlin found out through a call from the district's head of security, Robert Lorenz, early Friday morning. She alerted administrators and teachers through the use of a phone-chain usually utilized in the event of inclement weather.

Andrews received his call at 5:30 a.m.

"Unless it's snowing out, if my phone rings that early in the morning, it's never good," Andrews said on Monday. "As soon as I heard the message that Irene McLaughlin left for me, my heart was in my throat."

McLaughlin convened an emergency staff meeting at 7:30 a.m. and briefed the faculty about the accident and the emotions that would soon swell through the school.

When the students arrived, they massed together in the Commons, the spacious concourse near the entrance to the school that connects the building's various corridors and serves as a place for classmates to socialize between periods and during free time.

Friday morning, Conner's death transformed the Commons into a cathedral of grief and sorrow. The students shared their tears and sympathies there. Many remained throughout the day.

"They went there for comfort," McLaughlin said. "The bell rang and I didn't think I should be chasing these kids to class. They needed to be there."

Corrine Gandolfi, a senior who remembered playing schoolyard games with Conner during their time together at East Northport Middle School, was among the students who mourned at the high school.

"I've never seen the Commons so quiet," Gandolfi observed. "It was just silence…. You could walk through the hallway and hear a pin drop."

A Weekend of Grief and Remembrances

Hundreds of mourners gathered at the site of the crash and held a candlelit vigil, Friday evening. Friends tied balloons shaped like baseballs to the fence and filled poster boards and mementos with notes addressed to Conner.

"Now you're God's catcher," one person wrote in marker on the hide of a baseball, a thought echoed by O'Farrell, the priest, at the funeral mass on Monday.

"One thing I know [about baseball] is that the catcher and the pitcher control the game," O'Farrell said. "Jeff the catcher and God, our Lord, the pitcher. God has controlled the game of life since the beginning…. Now they play together on the field of Heaven."

The remembrances continued online, as friends posted comments to Conner's page on myspace.com and to a guestbook on legacy.com, and at public viewings at the Nolan & Taylor-Howe Funeral Home in Northport on Saturday and Sunday evening.

"I am going to question myself everyday wondering why an angel like you had to leave all of the people who loved you the absolute most behind," one friend wrote on Conner's page on myspace.com . He had joined the online community, popular with high school and college students, at the urging of friends just days before his death. "I am sure that everybody would love just to see that amazing smile of yours one last time."

At the funeral home, Sunday night, the line of mourners stretched to the street. Young men and women cried on each other's shoulders. Strong, stoic athletes sunk with sadness. Teachers and parents, the faces of reassurance, were flushed with angst.

Inside, there were flowers arrangements styled like baseballs and others that formed Conner's uniform number 31, which he wore in honor of his favorite player, the New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza. There were posters covered with photos of Conner that preserved flashes from his short life — laughs, friends and baseball.

From his youth there were images from a visit with the Disney character Goofy. From his young adulthood there were snapshots of Conner catching and batting. To the left of his open casket, there was a photo of Piazza.

Conner was buried at St. Philip Neri Cemetery in Northport wearing his home jersey from the varsity baseball team. Mourners at the viewings took one last glimpse of him in it, resting in eternal peace next to the tan mitt his used and the navy cap he wore.

’Twas Heaven Here With You

In the aftermath of Conner's death, members of the senior class and the baseball team have already discussed ways to honor their fallen classmate and teammate.

One idea suggested that a baseball scoreboard be built, like the one on the soccer and lacrosse field that is dedicated to the memory of Curt Sweeney, a Northport student who died in a car accident in 1992. Another idea included the construction of a memorial, like the one dedicated to the memory of Louis Acompora, the Northport student who died in 1999 after being struck in the chest with ball during a freshman lacrosse game.

"Lots of ideas are germinating right now," McLaughlin said. "Our goal is to support the kids in anything they're hoping to do…. It's important for the senior class to do this and to do it before they [graduate] to kind of help them through that. A lot of them are in a lot of pain right now."

That pain will resonate at milestone events for the class, like prom and graduation. For the baseball team, it will carry on throughout the upcoming season.

"Obviously starting the season is going to be tough," DeRosa said. "The first tryout day, the first practice, the first scrimmage, the first game, because Jeff was one of the guys in the middle of that."

The grief of Conner's classmates and teammates will continue to run on a parallel track with the memories of his life. The pain of his family and friends will go forever. So will the pride of knowing him, however short that time was.

The prayer card issued at the funeral home contained an excerpt from "To Those I Love," a poem by Isla Paschal Richardson.

"Grieve not… nor speak of me with tears," the card said. "But laugh and talk of me as though I were beside you. I loved you so," it said. "'twas heaven here with you."