Former World Bank Executive Richard Lynn, 71

Richard Brian Lynn, 71, a former executive at the World Bank, died Nov. 18 of complications of Shy-Drager syndrome, a rare degenerative disorder of the neurological system, at his country home in Aspers, Pa. He was a Washington resident.

Mr. Lynn was a management consultant and a former Navy intelligence officer "with the soul of a poet," his wife said. He worked for the management consultant McKinsey & Co. in Washington from 1966 to 1974, for the Federal Trade Commission for a year and for the World Bank from 1975 to 1996. He was a World Bank consultant after his retirement.

In addition to a career that took him around the world as he advised political leaders and organizations on management, technology and budgets, Mr. Lynn wrote haiku and sonnets, memorized "Hamlet" and "The Importance of Being Earnest," and wrote a suspense thriller that incorporated another love, philately.

He received the diagnosis of Shy-Drager syndrome, also known as multiple system atrophy, several years ago and had joined a research study of the incapacitating disease, which is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson's disease.

Mr. Lynn was born in Oak Park, Ill., and was the eighth-grade spelling champion and the top high school high jumper in his Elmhurst, Ill., school. He graduated from Hanover College in Hanover, Ind., and earned a master's degree in English literature from the University of Chicago in 1957. He taught English for a year at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill.

Mr. Lynn joined the Navy, training as an intelligence officer, and served in the Pentagon as a CIA liaison officer. From 1961 to 1963, he was posted in Port Lyautey, Morocco. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, he was in charge of the crypto-communications center team, processing intercepted communications and delivering them to the fleet. In 1963, he was sent to New York City and worked there for the CIA until he retired from the military in 1966.

He joined McKinsey & Co. and for eight years worked on assignments in Washington, Paris and New York for various federal agencies. He was assistant executive director for management at the FTC in 1974 before going to the World Bank as an in-house consultant, then manager and director.

At the World Bank, he worked on projects in Africa and the Middle East, served as its chief of office technology and director of general services, and was director of planning and budgeting at his retirement in 1996. For the next two years, he was an adviser to the United Nations undersecretary general for Africa, among other duties.

For the past 15 years, he was a judge of George Washington University's Arthur S. Flemming Awards, which recognize 12 outstanding federal employees. He was also a board member and officer for the William Penn House in the District. He was a member of the Religious Society of Friends and loved stillness and quiet.

He enjoyed gardening, listening to opera and baroque music, playing jazz piano and golfing. He had recently begun working sudoku puzzles and planned a second novel.

Survivors include his wife of 46 years, Christine Way Lynn of Washington; four children, Eric Brian Lynn of Washington, Catherine Amelia Lynn Doty of Kennett Square, Pa., Peter Alexander Lynn of New York City and Evangeline Eleanor Lynn Calland of Philadelphia; a brother; and seven grandchildren.