William Alexander Barr, a retired mechanical engineer who taught at the Naval Academy and investigated auto safety issues, died Sunday of Pick's disease, a neurological condition, at Rosewood Village in Charlottesville, Va., where he had lived since August. He was 81, and also had homes on Gibson Island and in the Village of Cross Keys in North Baltimore.
A professor of mechanical engineering at the service academy, he had been called as an expert witness in numerous industrial and automobile safety cases. He held six patents on a warning system that would signal when there is a danger of a parked car, its engine running, slipping into reverse gear and posing a threat to pedestrians or other vehicles.
Born in Boston and raised in Charlottesville, Va., he earned a degree in the humanities from St. John's College in Annapolis. His uncle and teacher, Stringfellow Barr, was the institution's president and co-founder of its Great Books curriculum.
Mr. Barr also earned a second undergraduate degree, in mechanical engineering, from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he was elected to its Raven Society honors group.
Classified as medically unfit for military service during World War II, Mr. Barr joined the American Field Service and drove an ambulance -- often through shrapnel hits -- throughout the African and Italian campaigns. He completed his education after the war with a master's degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg.
Mr. Barr moved to Gibson Island in 1953, and worked briefly at the Koppers Co. foundry in Southwest Baltimore and the Crown Cork and Seal Co. plant in Highlandtown.
In 1958, he joined the faculty of the Naval Academy as a marine engineering instructor. In 1970, he became an associate professor in the naval systems engineering department and taught thermodynamics and other subjects before retiring 1988. He also was a member of the Johns Hopkins University's engineering faculty.
"He was a gentleman of beautiful manners. To know him was to like him -- well-versed, well-educated," said Rameswar Bhattacharyya, former systems engineering department chairman. "He was an outstanding marine engineer. He had wide experience and an international outlook."
Mr. Barr was a consultant for Trident Associates, an Annapolis engineering firm, before founding Annapolis Engineering Associates while continuing to teach at the academy. He was retained on several occasions by Ford Motor Co. to consult on automobile negligence cases. Family members said he became fascinated by cars that suddenly shot into reverse when the gear indicator was in park. Family members said he investigated about 100 cases of this type.
"My father was a kind and compassionate person who wanted to prevent needless death and injury. He found from the federal government's own records the situation kills approximately 60 persons a year," said his son, William Alexander Barr Jr. of Earlysville, Va. "He devised a warning system to alert the driver that the car, although stationary, was in fact not in park at all."
Mr. Barr was a communicant of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Baltimore and the Gibson Island Church, and a member of the Elkridge and Gibson Island clubs.
Services will be held at 11 a.m. today at Grace Episcopal Church in Keswick, Va.
Other survivors include his wife of 19 years, the former Virginia Bacon Penfield; two more sons, James K. Barr of Welford, S.C., and Frank S. Barr of Gibson Island; a daughter, Mary Barr Kellington of New Haven, Vt.; a brother, Robert W. Barr of Sterling, Va.; a sister, Jane Barr MacConochie of Norfolk, Va.; two stepsons, William George Scarlett Jr. of Carlisle, Mass., and Robert Scarlett of Lutherville; three stepdaughters, Virginia Smith of Bel Air, Anne Perkins of Baltimore and Amy Shimp of Phoenix; and nine grandchildren. His first wife, the former Lydia Henderson, died in 1980.