Former NIT League Chairman Barr dead at 57

Former NIT League Chairman Barr dead at 57 Mick Barr, immediate past chairman of the National Industrial Transportation League, died suddenly on Saturday, the trade association said in a notice to its members.
   Barr, 57, was associate director of global logistics for consumer products maker Procter & Gamble, where he worked for 29 years. Barr was heavily involved as then chairman of the Ocean Committee in working with NIT League staff to push for the passage of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act in 1998 that opened the door for shippers to negotiate separate contracts with ocean lines instead of being subject to public tariff rates.
   Barr was a graduate of the Naval Academy, where he played football, and served in the Marine Corps before joining Procter & Gamble. His transportation and international logistics duties took him to Sacramento, Calif.; Memphis; Japan and finally company headquarters in Cincinnati.
   He had been scheduled to travel to Germany this week to discuss logistics issues with company staff there.
   “He was one of the good people,” NIT League President John Ficker said in a brief phone interview. He noted with bemusement how Barr, on a tour of an ancient Chinese village during a break from a shippers’ conference in Shanghai in 2004, stepped into a small grocery to do “a store check” for P&G products like Pringles and Pampers.
   The Procter & Gamble executive is survived by two sons, a granddaughter and his wife Connie.
   Services will be held Saturday in his hometown of Mason, Ohio, near Cincinnati.
   News of his death was first published online by Traffic World.