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Myer Barr, 98, owned a chain of jewelry stores

Myer Barr, 98, formerly of Center City, who operated a chain of jewelry stores in the Philadelphia area for years, died Sunday, Oct. 23, of complications from pneumonia at his home in Palm Beach, Fla.

Myer Barr
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Myer Barr, 98, formerly of Center City, who operated a chain of jewelry stores in the Philadelphia area for years, died Sunday, Oct. 23, of complications from pneumonia at his home in Palm Beach, Fla.

Mr. Barr graduated from Germantown High School. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1933 and a law degree from Harvard University in 1936.

During the Depression, law firms weren't hiring, his son Stephen said. So Mr. Barr went to work for his father, Herman, who had established Associated Barr Stores in 1921. The firm eventually operated 13 jewelry and silverware stores in the Philadelphia area, with a main store on Chestnut Street in Center City.

Mr. Barr and his father also established Jewelmasters Inc., which provided diamonds and other precious gems to department stores.

The Barr stores advertised heavily in local newspapers and were a pioneer in television advertising, sponsoring Barr's Diamond Theater, a program of old movies on WFIL-TV. Dick Clark, later of American Bandstand, was a spokesman in the jewelry ads in the early 1950s. The jewelry store also sponsored weathercaster Judy Lee on WPTZ-TV.

Associated Barr Stores was sold to Zales Jewelers in 1971.

Mr. Barr wrote a law textbook, Studies in Social and Legal Theories, and coauthored with Paul J. Storm Studies in Diamontology: A Text on the Mining, Sorting, Processing, and Evaluation of Diamonds.

He was a founder and board member of the Diamond Council of America.

Mr. Barr was an honorary life member of the board of Eagleville Hospital in recognition of his long service. In the 1950s, he joined the board of what was then Eagleville Sanatorium for the treatment of tuberculosis. In the 1960s, he and other board members agreed to convert the facility into a treatment center for alcoholism for men. Women were admitted in 1969, and treatment was expanded to include substance abuse.

Mr. Barr served on the board of Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park. He was a member of the Locust Club and Philmont Country Club in Huntingdon Valley.

He and his wife of 28 years, Ann David Barr, raised two children in East Falls. She died in 1968. He was married to Diana Marcus Barr for 25 years until her death in 1996.

Since the late 1980s, Mr. Barr lived in Palm Beach, where he played golf well into his 90s, his son said.

Besides his son, he is survived by another son, Jeffrey; four grandchildren; and his longtime companion, Ruth Kopelman.

Services were private.