86-Year-Old Professor’s Body Recovered After He Crashed His Car into Country Club Pond

Mar. 15, 2025

Atlee Cunningham Jr a senior Lockheed Martin fellow, has worked as an engineer with the company for over 42 years. The defense/aerospace industry could be in trouble with so many retiring skilled workers and no youth to take up the skills.Photo:Amy Peterson/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty

Amy Peterson/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty

A retired professor and engineer has been identified as the man found dead inside a car that crashed into a county club pond in Texas.

Fort Worth police said the car was found in the pond on the golf course at the Rivercrest Country Club in the 1500 block of Western Avenue shortly after 8 a.m. local time on Thursday, Jan. 30, according toABC affiliate WFAAandNBC affiliate KDFW.

A dive team reportedly discovered a man’s body inside the vehicle.

TheTarrant County Medical Examiner’s Officehas identified the victim as 86-year-old Atlee Cunningham.

Cunningham spent decades working at the Fort Worth facility of the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, beginning in October 1965, according to hisbiographyon UT’s website. (The company was known as General Dynamics, Fort Worth Division until 1993.)

“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,” the biography states.

Cunningham had multiple degrees from The University of Texas at Austin and was previously a visiting industrial professor at the Southern Methodist University, University of Texas (UT) at Austin and Arlington graduate schools.

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Additionally, he previously served as a member of several technical teams for North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Science and Technology Organization “concerned with Aeroelasticity, unsteady separated flows and computational uncertainty” and “published more than 50 technical papers and reports in these subject areas.”

A spokesperson for the Cockrell School of Engineering at UT Austin did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

Cunningham’s cause and manner of death have not yet been released.

source: people.com