Deacon Barry was born in Billerica, MA, the son of Archibald and Mary Lloyd. He was brought up mostly in the Greater Lowell Area, attending local schools and graduating from Lowell High School in 1955. In his early years, he moved about the country with his parents since his Dad was a pilot in the Air Force.
He attended and graduated from Lowell Technological Institute―now UMASS Lowell―in 1961 with a B.S. degree in Electronic Engineering and was employed by Raytheon Co. as a Test Equipment Design Engineer.
As a member of the Naval Reserve since graduating from High School, he attended the Naval Officer Training School in Newport, RI and received his commission as a Naval Officer in 1962. He served three years active duty aboard the carrier USS John Hancock CVA-19 operating out of the Naval Air Station in Alameda, CA and after 3 seven month-long deployments in the South China Sea area, is a veteran of the Vietnam Conflict.
He married his wife Joyce in 1960 at St. Rita Church in Lowell. After leaving active naval service in 1965 he and his wife and then three daughters―Kathleen, Beth Ann, Erin―settled back in Lowell as members of St. Margaret Parish and took on employment as a Radar Design Engineer at Sanders Associates in Nashua, NH. In the ensuing years God continued to bless their family with arrival of three sons―Barry Jr., Timothy, Gregory. Today their family includes fifteen grandchildren and one great grandson. In these years Barry had the opportunity to work in the Scouting program and the Junior Legion of Mary with his children and others of the parish.
For the next 32 years Barry continued his employment with Sanders Associates―now BAE Systems―and retired in 1998. He continued consulting for various electronic companies for the next three years before permanently retiring from engineering work.
During this time Barry was called to the Diaconate Formation Program in 1977 through his associations with a large Charismatic Prayer group at the Christian Formation Center in Tewksbury. After completing his three-year formation, he was ordained a Permanent Deacon for the Archdiocese of Boston by Archbishop Humberto Medeiros on May 17, 1980 and was assigned to his home parish of St. Margaret for the next eighteen years assisting several Pastors in their assignment.
Bishop John McNamara of the Merrimack Valley Region reassigned Barry to St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Tyngsboro, MA to assist the Pastor there to strengthen the spiritual life of the community and help build a new parish hall and a new church worship space. He was assigned as “Clerk of the Works” to liaison between the Archdiocese planning engineers and the selected contractor to help keep the project on time and on budget.
After completing this project and nine years of service to St. Mary Magdalen Parish, Barry was called back to St. Margaret Parish in 2008 by Archbishop Sean O’Malley to assist the Administrator in his assignment there. Deacon Barry has remained there performing his diaconal duties to the present time and looks forward to assisting the Pastor of the new Holy Rood Collaborative.