MAP students learning life’s lessons

“Are you indestructible? I thought I was,” an electronic voice asked students at the Meadowbrook Alternative Program at the Brookside School in North Merrick last week. The voice detailed the saga of Chris Memoli, now 26, whose life changed in an instant in a terrible car accident when he was 17.

The voice told the horrifying tale because Memoli cannot. The accident left him with a traumatic brain injury, and he cannot talk. Memoli now speaks by typing into a DynaWrite computer, which processes the text into speech.

These days, Memoli said he considers himself fortunate to be able to walk and communicate through his DynaWrite. But in July of 2002, having just finished his junior year of high school, Memoli was angry at the world, having lost his father, John, to brain cancer two years earlier. He was drinking heavily without concern for whom he might hurt, including himself. Memoli told the MAP students that he remembers little about the night before the accident other than he had been partying at a “kegger,” like so many times before.

The next morning, Memoli jumped into the passenger seat of a car to get food. He did not buckle his seat belt. The driver began racing with another friend, and within seconds the girl at the wheel lost control of the car, flipping it several times. Memoli, who reminds students over and over that he wasn’t wearing a seat belt of the time of the accident, was tossed around inside the car before it came to a stop in a ditch.

“That’s why I’m here today, to get this message out to you: Protect yourself and buckle up,” Memoli said.

The Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District and Community Parent Center brought Memoli in to discuss good decision-making with MAP students on April 8. Wendy Tepfer, the Parent Center executive director, arranged the visit. MAP, which provides an alternative to mainstream classes, takes in students from throughout the Central High School District.