Man found in Fort Worth country club pond identified as retired Lockheed Martin engineer.
A Fort Worth man who died after he drove into a pond at River Crest Country Club has been identified as 86-year-old Atlee Cunningham Jr., who retired after decades of work for Lockheed Martin. Courtesy of University of Texas at Austin School of Engineering
A Fort Worth man who died after he drove into a pond at River Crest Country Club last week has been identified as 86-year-old Atlee Cunningham Jr., who retired after decades of work for Lockheed Martin.
According to Cunningham’s biography on the University of Texas at Austin School of Engineering website, he had worked “since October 1965, at the Fort Worth facility of the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company (formerly General Dynamics, Fort Worth Division until 1993), where he gained many years of experience.
His areas of expertise include development of steady and unsteady aerodynamic methods,
His areas of expertise include development of steady and unsteady aerodynamic methods, aeroelasticity and buffet prediction methods, wind and water tunnel testing for unsteady flows, and flight testing.”
Cunningham also taught as a visiting industrial professor at the SMU, UT Austin and UT Arlington graduate schools, according to the bio.
Over the years, he published more than 50 technical papers and obtained two aerodynamics related patents.
At Lockheed, he worked on projects related to F-16 design and development and also “provided support and guidance to NASA for developing a new technique for testing with rain (from a fire hose) in the 40×80 wind tunnel at NASA Ames,” the biography states.
A Fort Worth Fire Department dive team recovered Cunningham’s body and a car from a pond on the country club’s golf course on Thursday morning, Jan. 30. A 911 caller reported seeing a silver car in the water in the 1500 block of Western Avenue. The caller thought the driver might have crashed into the pond overnight, when there was heavy rainfall in the area.
