Hauppauge's Biondo still coming to terms with sister's death

Angelo Biondo is a tough kid. He's not afraid of 90-mph fastballs. His Hauppauge baseball team is headed for the playoffs. His batting average is sky-high.

But sometimes he just breaks down and cries.

He wants to share his joy with his sister, Nicole, but she's not there. And then the tears come.

The accident, in 2004, was horrific. Nicole Biondo was on a ski trip with a friend, and on the last run of the day at Belleyaire Ski Center in upstate Highmount, she crashed into a tree and suffered a broken neck. Two hours later, before any of her family members could get to see her, she died at Benedictine Hospital.

This was Jan. 18, 2004. Nicole Biondo was a 17-year-old senior at Hauppauge High School and looking forward to the rest of her life.

Life would never be the same for the Biondo family. Nicole's parents, Joe and Donna Biondo, her sisters Jessica, 19, and Amanda, 15, and 11-year-old brother Angelo were left trying to grasp what happened.

Even now at the age of 17, Angelo has trouble walking past her bedroom in the family's two-story colonial home. He used to be afraid to look in there.

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"She's right across the hall from my room," Angelo said. "I would close my eyes and think it was all just a nightmare, that she was coming back home one day."

That's the part that Angelo Biondo misses the most. He would love to be able to sit with her and tell her about his baseball exploits. He'd love to be able to share his good at-bats and even the bad ones.

He'd love to tell her that he's hitting well with a .377 average, two game-winning hits and 17 RBIs. He'd tell her how he's shared a special season with his Hauppauge teammates on the way to this week's Suffolk Class A playoffs.

"I used to ask myself, could she really be gone?" he said. "It changed my life forever. It took me a long time to come to grips with her death."

Angelo Biondo is a fun-loving kid who makes the most of every at-bat, every inning and every class. He's not just a one-dimensional athlete. He's also a good student and a member of the chamber choir.

He also knows firsthand that nothing in life is guaranteed. He believes in the adage that yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift.

"I think all the time, 'What was the last thing I said to her? I hope it was something nice,' " he said. "Did I tell her that I loved her enough? These are things that have gone through my mind for years.

"I still see the pain in my parents. My father dealt with it by working all the time. I can tell when he's thinking about her because he gets lost in his thoughts. My mother will never get over Nicole's death. She is still devastated. The thoughts of my sister never go away. She didn't get to graduate. Her life was just starting."

Angelo now has a perspective of just how young she was when she died.

"You're supposed to enjoy your senior year and get ready for college," Angelo said. "Being a senior in high school and having the opportunity to play sports is special. And my sister was loving life, skiing, enjoying her friends, all the right things, all the good things."

They erected a field house with a concession stand with more than $57,000 raised in her memory at the Hauppauge Youth Complex. Her name is emblazoned on the front.

"It took years for my son to come to terms with her death," Donna said. "He's a senior and thought about it at Christmas and broke down. He was sitting on her bed and just thinking. It was the first time he put his head on my shoulder and let it out."

The pain never goes away. A large tattoo of a cross and rosary beads covers Biondo's right shoulder in his sister's memory. His hat has her name inside; next to it, it says Luke 1:37, which means, "Nothing is impossible with God."

Biondo wrote his college essay about losing his sister. He reflected on the importance of living every day and how he's become a better person.

He wrote: "I carry Nicole in my heart each and every day. I hope she will be proud of the person her brother becomes."

Biondo graduates June 27.