Deer Park Recycling has established the Jeffrey M. Sissons Memorial Scholarship Fund at SUNY Old Westbury — a $400,000 commitment created in memory of the company’s founder, Jeffrey Sissons.
Jeffrey Sissons started the business in 1994 and set the rule the yards still run on: pay a fair price, grade it honestly, and treat the person with a pickup truck the same as the one with a fleet. He passed away in 2024, and the fund was created at the direction of his son, Anthony Sissons, through a donation to the Old Westbury College Foundation, Inc. to honor his father’s life, career and long habit of quiet giving.
What the fund does
The gift endows ten four-year scholarships, each worth up to $40,000 — $10,000 a year toward tuition, fees and other costs at the University. Each fall a new award goes to one incoming first-year student from Westbury or New Cassel who is doing well in school and shows financial need but doesn’t otherwise qualify for aid.
The first Sissons scholar is Alexa Santiago Munoz, a first-year Biochemistry major from New Cassel.
Why a scrap yard funds a scholarship
Recycling is the whole job here — pulling steel, copper, brass and aluminum back out of the waste stream so it doesn’t end up buried. The scholarship works on the same idea, one town over: keep something valuable close to home. Deer Park Recycling and DPR Scrap Metal have run yards in Westbury for years, and the students this fund reaches are the neighbors those trucks pass every working day.