Donald Barr

Donald Barr, an educator, writer and former headmaster of the Dalton School in Manhattan and the Hackley School in Tarrytown, N.Y., died in February 2004 at a hospital in Langhorne, Pa. He was 82 and lived in Colebrook, Conn. Before moving into private preparatory education, he established a science honors program at Columbia University that served as a model for similar programs elsewhere administered by the National Science Foundation. He became head of Dalton in 1964. His sometimes stormy tenure ended in 1974 with his departure after disputes with the trustees over budget priorities and his disciplinarian approach to substance abuse. The next year, he became headmaster at Hackley, where he soon dismissed more than two dozen students for disruptive conduct and poor academic performance. This time, he had parents and trustees in his corner. Donald Barr, who was born in Manhattan on Aug. 2, 1921, majored in mathematics and anthropology at Columbia, graduating in 1941. He went into the Army and served with the Office of Strategic Services in Washington and Europe. Returning to Columbia, he taught in the English department while getting his master's degree in 1951 and completing course requirements for a Ph.D. In 1955 the engineering school asked him to oversee its efforts to spot promising elementary and secondary science students, including girls, and enlist them for advanced training at the school to help them rise to the college level. Mr. Barr's wife, Mary Margaret Ahern Barr, a college teacher, died in 2001. He is survived by four sons, Christopher J. of Yardley, Pa.; William P. of McLean, Va., a former United States attorney general; Hilary B. T. of Heiningen, Germany; and Stephen M. of Newark, Del.; and eight grandchildren.