Methuen teacher apparently drowned in rescue bid

On Tuesday, the 43-year-old Methuen schoolteacher apparently drowned after he jumped into a lake in Bristol, N.H., without a lifejacket because he thought his brother-in-law needed help.

“Dennis thought I was in trouble, and being Dennis - he’s such a goodhearted man - he thought with his heart and not his brain,’’ Bistany’s brother-in-law William J. Hardy, 50, of Salem, N.H., said tearfully yesterday.

Authorities searching Newfound Lake yesterday with a side-scan sonar, an underwater camera, and grapple hooks could not locate the body and planned to resume the search today, said Lieutenant Todd Bogardus of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, one of the agencies searching along with the New Hampshire Marine Patrol Bureau.

The lake waters run too deep, between 130 and 160 feet, to send in divers, Bogardus said.

Bistany, who was unmarried and lived with his father in Lawrence, was vacationing in New Hampshire with his sister, brother-in-law, girlfriend, and her two children.

The accident occurred Tuesday afternoon when the group was on a boat, Hardy said. After Bistany jumped into the water, Hardy swam back, he said, to the boat and tried to pull Bistany out.

“I just couldn’t reach him,’’ he said. “I tried to go as deep as I could go. He was feet in front of me, and I couldn’t reach him. . . . Dennis was more than a brother-in-law - my best friend.’’

Hired by the school district in 2003, Bistany had most recently been a sixth-grade teacher at Marsh Grammar School in Methuen. He taught math and science and coached several baseball teams.

Shocked parents and teachers called the school yesterday, asking about the accident, expressing their sorrow, and inquiring about counseling sessions, said Richard P. Beshara, the principal.

“It was just a major shock,’’ Beshara said. “It wasn’t like he was sick or something.’’

This is the second year in a row that the school has lost a teacher near the beginning of the academic year, Beshara said. Last year, a special education teacher was diagnosed with cancer during the summer and died just after school started, he said. The school installed a plaque in the library in her memory.

Beshara said that in coming weeks, administrators hope to discuss how to explain the death to students and to decide how they will honor Bistany’s memory and service to the school, which reopens next month.

Reached by phone yesterday, Bistany’s father, Robert, said he had heard his son was a good swimmer. “You couldn’t ask for a better son, you couldn’t ask for a better teacher, you couldn’t ask for a better friend,’’ he said. “It’s a great loss for me.’’

Bistany’s apparent drowning came a day after a 3-year-old drowned in a pool in Concord, N.H., where she was swimming with her mother and siblings, the Associated Press reported. Police are investigating.

Nandini Jayakrishna can be reached at njayakrishna@globe.com.