Staff Writer

Ed Syvinski sank to the ocean floor three times, his hand clenched over the nose and mouth of the 2-year-old girl he was desperate to save.

“My feet touched bottom and I figured this was it,” Syvinski said.

Three times he pushed up, propelling himself and the barely conscious child to the surface of the 46-degree water. They were in the water for 75 minutes before he swam to a nearby island and boarded rescue boats bound for shore.

Fifty years later, Syvinski stepped off a small boat onto Wood Island with Tammy Burnham, the girl he saved from the cold ocean waters. Surrounded by family and friends, the pair walked across the island to the house Tammy shared with her family when she fell ill with a high fever and abdominal pains on Nov. 29, 1960.

The July 7 reunion was scheduled to remember the rescue and marked the first time Tammy and Syvinski returned to the island together.

Syvinski was a 19-year-old Coast Guard seaman stationed at Fletcher’s Neck Life Boat Station in Biddeford Pool when the call came in that 2-year-old Tammy needed to go to the hospital. Tammy’s father, Laurier Burnham, was the keeper of Wood Island Light and could not transport his daughter because of fog, rain and rough seas.

Syvinski set out from Fletcher’s Neck on a 30-foot lifeboat with Kenneth Realue, Raymond Bill and Chief John Kennedy. The crew commandeered a lobsterman’s skiff to make it easier to navigate the shallow waters near Wood Island, where Laurier Burnham was waiting with his daughter, Syvinski said.

Once the lifeboat was close to the island, Syvinksi and Bill set out in the skiff. Bill held Tammy as Syvinksi rowed them back toward the lifeboat.

“There were some huge groundswells coming in with that storm. One caught us by surprise,” Syvinski said. “The boat sunk and that put us in the water. We were hanging on (to the skiff) by our fingernails.”

Fearing they would all die unless he could find help, Bill decided to swim back to the lifeboat, Syvinksi said. He stayed in the water and held Tammy with one hand and the overturned skiff hull with the other.

“(Bill) deserves credit for being instrumental in getting the word out we were missing,” Syvinski said.

As Syvinski waited for help to arrive, he grew more and more tired, unable to feel most of his body.

“When we went down to the bottom, that’s when I really thought it was over. I whispered to her to hold her breath and I put my hand over her mouth,” he said. “Each time we bounced it didn’t seem quite as deep, so I pushed again. It gave me hope.”

The water continued to get shallower as Syvinski and Tammy reached the rocky edge of Negro Island. With hypothermia setting in, Syvinski dragged himself and Tammy onto the rocks, he said. He still feels bad that she momentarily slipped from his arms onto the rocks as he tried to get them out of the water.

As Tammy and Syvinski struggled to stay afloat, the crew aboard the lifeboat determined a search was ill-advised under the conditions, according to a Coast Guard report. Syvinski and Tammy were presumed lost at sea and drowned.

On Wood Island, Lily Burnham, Tammy’s mother, said she and her husband heard a radio message that said crews would look for the bodies in the morning. Laurier Burnham refused to accept that and headed out in his peapod boat to look for the pair, Lily Burnham said.

Syvinski was still holding Tammy, huddled on the rocks of Negro Island, when he saw Laurier Burnham pass by.

“He came right by us and I tried to yell out. Because of his motor he couldn’t hear or see us,” Syvinski said.

Syvinski said Laurier Burnham pulled his boat around and came onto the island with a flashlight.

“I won’t forget the look on his face when he saw Tammy was still alive. His expression I can’t really describe,” Syvinski said. “He said later he had a feeling if we were able to survive we would end up on Negro Island.”

Laurier Burnham brought the pair to the waiting Coast Guard lifeboat, where Syvinksi said he and Tammy were put in the forward hold to warm up. The lifeboat crew had trouble navigating Wood Island Harbor in the dense fog, according to a Coast Guard report.

Syvinski and Tammy were in the hold when local lobsterman Preston Alley pulled his boat alongside the lifeboat, Syvinski said. The lobsterman offered to take the sick child to her grandparents, who were waiting on shore to bring her to the hospital.

“Boy, I remember once Preston Alley had her he swung that boat around and away he went. He was gone,” Syvinski said.

Tammy was delivered to her grandparents, who laid her across their laps in the car because she was frozen and stiff, Lily Burnham said. She was taken to Notre Dame Hospital in Biddeford, where she spent five days recovering. The lifeboat crew visited her in the hospital.

Syvinski said he rode in the lifeboat back to the Coast Guard station, where he was poured a shot of rum and given a cold sandwich for dinner before going on watch. Syvinski said he went on with his life, and served four years in the Coast Guard before he headed to college and a career in engineering.

Tammy survived the rescue without any permanent injuries and vague memories of the night.

“I remember falling in the water. I was really scared,” she said last week as she stood next to the lighthouse she once called home. “I remember Eddie had his hand on my nose and mouth. It was really cold.”

Though her family sometimes talked about the rescue, it was not a story Tammy widely shared with people she knew as she grew up in Saco, where her family moved after leaving Wood Island in 1962.

“Everyone went back to their lives and it wasn’t talked about,” said Margo Alley, Preston Alley’s granddaughter and the author of “Wood Island Lighthouse: The Rescue of Tammy Burnham.”

Tammy saw Syvinski again 32 years later after her sister, Holly, arranged a reunion at his home in New Hampshire. He showed her a scrapbook he kept of his time in the Coast Guard. Tammy said she was touched to see he had pinned his dog tags below a photograph of her in the hospital.

“I recognized her right away,” Syvinski said of their first reunion. “I felt an overwhelming feeling to see her because we defied nature that night. It was a blessing to live our lives beyond that night.”

Tammy said there was no official investigation into the rescue until three decades later when her sister contacted officials about what happened that night. After a 1992 investigation by Coast Guard Lt. Kristopher Furtney, Syvinski and Laurier Burnham were each awarded the Coast Guard Commendation Medal for “heroic lifesaving efforts.”

Preston Alley, who died three years earlier, was awarded a Public Service Commendation because his “determined efforts clearly contributed to the saving of Tammy Burnham’s life,” according to a Coast Guard report.

Several elements of the rescue, including the role of the lifeboat, have been disputed by family members of other crew members since the initial Coast Guard investigation. The Coast Guard in March declined to open a new investigation into the rescue because “it would serve no benefit to the public interest.”

Friends of Wood Island Lighthouse released a statement July 7 saying the organization does not endorse a particular version because of differing interpretations of the rescue.

Tammy said she is grateful for the role “Eddie” played in saving her life.

“It’s amazing. He saved me and he saved generations to come. My kids and grandkids wouldn’t be here without him,” she said. “It’s a spiritual feeling to be here.”

Shading the bright sun from his eyes as he stood at the edge of Wood Island last week, Syvinski said he thinks often of the stormy evening in 1960. 

“I still say “thank you, Lord, for saving both of us.’ I think He had a hand in it,” he said. “I don’t have any other explanation.”

Staff Writer Gillian Graham can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 213.