Bethpage community recalls mom, daughter killed in crash

In the tight-knit Bethpage neighborhood where they lived, Barbara Ryan was known as a one-woman welcoming committee. Her daughter, Joanna, 11, seemed like a big sister to many younger kids on Bertram Place.

The pair was inseparable, said their friends on the block.

"She was Barbara's 'Mini-me,' " neighbor Janet Picone said of Joanna.

Paige Scalice, another neighbor, said Barbara, 44, "was the heart of the block."

The two were killed in a crash at Hicksville Road and Central Avenue Wednesday afternoon, police said, when a tractor-trailer ran a red light and slammed into the 2006 Pontiac Barbara was driving. Joanna was in the front passenger seat. They were pronounced dead at the hospital Wednesday evening, Nassau County police said.

"She was a wonderful mother," Barbara Ryan's visibly shaken father, Bob Esposito, said Thursday as he stood in the doorway of her home, which was still clad in Easter decorations. Esposito said he would now turn his attention to Barbara Ryan's son, Jerry, 16.

"He has no mother and no sister because of two minutes," Esposito said.

Picone said she has lived across the street from Barbara Ryan for the past 13 years. Picone said Ryan had lived in the home she shared with her children since she was 16. Ryan eventually bought the home from her parents, Picone said.

Picone described Ryan as a dedicated caretaker who was very visible and always on the go. "Anything you needed she was there for you," Picone said.

For more than four years, Ryan had worked as a school bus driver, shuttling preschool children with special needs, said her supervisor Meg Schreck.

"She was just a sweet lady who always had a smile on her face," she said.

Minutes before the crash, Ryan and her daughter bought a variety of pizza slices from Ciminelli's Pizzeria & Restaurant in Bethpage. "It's terrible. Two lives erased. Just like that," said Danny Pedersen, a manager at the pizzeria.

Picone said Joanna was often seen teaching other kids play games like jacks and hopscotch.

Joanna attended Island Trees Memorial Middle School and had made the honor roll, Principal Roger Bloom said. "We are devastated by the loss of Joanna," he said. School guidance counselors and psychologists are helping students deal with their grief, Bloom said.Judy Chiarello, another neighbor, said last Thanksgiving, Ryan invited Chiarello and her daughter to spend it with her family.

"There was always an extra seat in her home," Chiarello said. "It's definitely like part of the neighborhood has died."

With Gary Dymski