By:Nick Buglione
Over the past 30 years, the Salisbury resident raised three sons on her own -- not to mention more than 100 foster kids -- while working three jobs. She went on to volunteer as a counselor at the Nassau County jail, where she later formed a drama group and taught creative writing and yoga to inmates.
Simply put, Tomasino has spent most of her life caring for others. And she wouldn't have it any other way.
"I think it's very important that everybody gives back to society, not just take," said Tomasino, who currently works as director of volunteers at the Christa House in West Babylon, a home for poor people dying of AIDS.
Overseeing volunteers is a job that suits Tomasino, the consummate volunteer, perfectly. With three boys to raise and no support from their father, she still chose to open her home to foster kids. For 10 years, from the late 1970s to the late '80s, more than 100 children, ages 10 to 16, passed through her doors. They were runaways, truants, alcoholics and drug addicts.
"I love kids, and [my sons and I] got very good at having foster kids," she said, though admitting that her home's only bathroom got a little crowded.
Some 20 years ago, Tomasino enrolled in college. It was there that she got involved with the Nassau County jail and made her most memorable contributions as a volunteer. "When I was in Nassau Community College, I was in a sociology class, and the professor was looking for volunteers to counsel men at the jail," she said. "The professor thought I would be good."
Considering that Tomasino's family grappled with addiction issues and her brother died of a drug overdose, the professor believed she could convey to inmates, many of whom are addicts, how substance abuse wrecks lives.
Although the idea of sitting down with criminals for an hour once a week didn't appeal to Tomasino, she eventually agreed to do it. With no counseling experience, she simply listened to what the inmates had to say and responded from the heart, never asking what crimes they committed or how they wound up in jail. "It was heart-wrenching," she said of her one-on-one sessions. "I don't know why I kept going back."
But Tomasino has a saying that effectively explains why she kept going back: "The human spirit never dies, no matter how much it's trampled."
From her counseling sessions, Tomasino began organizing full support groups for the inmates, and then let her creativity take over. She got permission from the sheriff to start a jail drama group. A dozen inmates signed up to stage "Twelve Angry Men." Though the rehearsals and script readings were a blast, the play never made it to the stage, she said. Prisoners at the maximum-security jail come and go frequently, and it was impossible to keep the cast intact, Tomasino said.
So, in 1996, she started a creative writing group to offer another artistic outlet. It was a huge success. "There were men waiting to get into my group, and their writing was extraordinary," Tomasino said.
"There's something that happens between your mind and hand when you're writing," she said. "You can express yourself without looking at a person. It's a lost art, because no one really writes anymore with e-mail."
Some of the men were barely literate, able to construct only a sentence or two, while others could produce surprisingly inspired prose. The writing assignments were simple -- essays on posed questions or short stories, for example. The results, however, were sometimes breathtaking, she said. "Anyone can write, but a lot of the men were afraid they weren't getting it right," Tomasino said. "There were men who would write so exquisitely that it would bring me to tears."
She has saved much of the work from the group, and flips through it from time to time. One particular piece, from an inmate named Michael, still strikes a chord. "What happened to the joy?" the essay reads. "My joy is missing in action. I'm told that it is being held prisoner of some civil war. My joy once rested in the strength of my mother's arms, or piggy-backed across my father's tired shoulders.
"My joy was kidnapped and sentenced to death without resurrection, life without parole."
Tomasino doesn't know whether her writing classes affected inmates once they made it out of the jail, though she once ran into a former group member who said he had just returned from Nassau Community College in search of a creative writing class. The comment nearly made her cry, she said.
Even if it's unclear what prisoners took away from the group, such activities do them a great deal of good while they're still inside, said John Duer, a longtime Nassau County jail correction officer. "It gives an opportunity for inmates to take a negative situation and get something positive out of it," he said. "It gives them something to do. It keeps them occupied. Boredom is a big problem, and a lot of these programs are really good for them."
Tomasino no longer runs the creative writing group, having given it up about a year ago in favor of a weekly yoga class at the jail that has since taken off.
In total, she has logged more than 20 years of volunteer service at the jail, and will receive a special citation from Nassau County Legislature Presiding Officer Judy Jacobs, a Democrat from Woodbury, on June 7.
"Terry Tomasino's selfless volunteer work at the Nassau County Correctional Facility has given hope and a sense of self-worth to hundreds of men who have had the opportunity to attend her classes and be in her company," Jacobs said. "She has made the world a better place."
