Hon. Carrington Williams

Carrington Williams, 83, a McLean lawyer and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates who was board chairman of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, died Aug. 3 at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He died after a heart attack and surgery for blood clots that formed after a July 22 auto accident in which his car was struck from behind on Route 50.

Mr. Williams, who was of counsel to the McLean law firm of McGuireWoods LLP and was a retired firm partner, served in the Virginia legislature from 1966 to 1970 and again from 1972 to 1978. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Senate in 1970.

He was a planning committee chairman of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority from 1986 to 1994 and was founding chairman of the Washington Airports Task Force from 1982 to 1996.

He also served on the board of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. A 25-year trustee of the George Mason University Foundation, he was a 1991 recipient of the George Mason Medal.

Mr. Williams, a past chairman of the Civil War Preservation Trust, was founding chairman of the foundation that succeeded it. Through those posts, he led in securing management plans for the battlefields and in coordinating federal and state efforts to secure funding to preserve the historic battlefields for future generations.

For example, in 2000 he helped secure $3.5 million from the Virginia General Assembly for land preservation at the Kernstown, Third Winchester and Cedar Creek battlefields.

Established by Congress in 1996, the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District includes Augusta, Clarke, Frederick, Highland, Page, Rockingham, Shenandoah and Warren counties as well as the cities of Harrisonburg, Staunton, Waynesboro and Winchester.

Mr. Williams, who lived in Falls Church, was born in Brookneal, Va. He was a 1940 graduate of Johns Hopkins University and a 1942 graduate of the University of Virginia Law School. He served in the Army Air Forces in the Pacific during World War II.
He was assistant trial section chief of the Justice Department's tax division in the late 1950s and became a tax lawyer and partner in the law firm of Boothe, Pritchard & Dudley.

While serving as a state legislator from Fairfax County, he was usually described as a moderate-conservative Democrat. In the House of Delegates, he served on the tax-legislation-writing Finance Committee and chaired the state's advisory Revenue Resources Commission.

His first wife, Carla Williams, died in 1971. His daughter, Allison Williams, also died.

Survivors include his wife of 29 years, Doreen S., of Falls Church; a son from his first marriage, Barclay M., of Austell, Ga.; a stepdaughter, Patricia J. Reid of Louisville; a brother; and two grandchildren.