By Alexandra Mayer-Hohdahl  Lowell Sun Article  11/07/2007

WILMINGTON - It had long been a ritual for the Barry boys and their father to explore the sandbars off Plum Island during low tide. On July 16. 2006, Mike Barry ran down the beach and dove into the water. Almost immediately, he lost all feeling in his arms and legs.

"We don't know if things had shifted in the channel or if it was a tragic miscalculation," his mother, Kathy Barry, recalled yesterday. "Mike had missed the channel and dove straight into a sandbar." The 17-year-old Wilmington resident broke two vertebrae in his neck.

He managed to keep his head above water long enough to cry out for help. His 16-year-old brother Tom heard the yelp and swam over. Then, his Scout training kicked in. Tom dove down and brought his brother up by the shoulders, stabilizing him until his father could reach them. "The way he did it probably saved Mike's life, or at the very least his mobility," Barry said. "But Tom is very matter-of-fact about it. He doesn't act like he did anything huge."

The Scouts' National Court of Honor disagrees. The Yankee Clipper Council last night surprised Tom, now a Wilmington High School senior, with a Heroism Award at the Wilmington Congregational Church. The award — the third-highest provided by the Boy Scouts of America ~ is given out to Scouts who show "heroism and skill" in saving or trying to save another person, according to their Web site.

Only 92 of the country's more than 5 million Boy Scouts received the award last year, according to Greater Lowell district executive Dan Bush. Tom is the only Scout in the Yankee Cupper Council, which covers 52 communities north of Boston, to receive a Heroism Award this year.

"In many regards, this is considered to be the red badge of courage in the Boy Scouts," Bush said  All  four of the Barry brothers are Scouts. Most of the techniques that Tom applied and the calmness he displayed off Plum Island came straight from the first-aid training provided by the Scouts, Bush said. Once emergency responders arrived at the beach, they took Mike to Newburyport by boat. He was later airlifted to Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, where his sixth vertebrae was replaced and his seventh vertebrae repaired. Although he still has to avoid contact sports, Mike now is a student at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. "If you don't know about what happened to him, you would never be able to tell," Barry said. "It's kind of miraculous."

She laughed as she remembered how Tom had asked her for a shaving kit as they shopped for Mike during his hospital stay. "I told him, You could ask me for a car right now and I would go out and get it for you,'" she said. "I am just so proud of him. Had he not been there, who knows what would have happened."