Even those Hawai'i residents unfamiliar with the name Edward Alvey Wright have no doubt felt the effect of the man's passions and ideas.

The rear admiral, former Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard commander and state transportation director under John Burns and George Ariyoshi, was a powerful advocate for many of the state's most ambitious and, at times, controversial transportation initiatives.

Wright died Thursday, just two weeks after his 100th birthday.

As DOT chief, he was a major player in the decades-long push to build H-3 Freeway, a position that often found him in dispute with environmental groups and community activists, and spearheaded the construction of the reef runway at the Honolulu International Airport.

Wright was also an early proponent of interisland ocean transportation, serving as an adviser to the Seaflight hydrofoil service in the 1970s and more recently to the Hawaii Superferry.

He even advocated an elevated light rail system to relieve traffic congestion in the city's central urban corridor — nearly 40 years ago, when the number of cars on the road was roughly half the present total.

"He was always looking downstream at what would best serve the state of Hawai'i," said former Honolulu transportation director Chuck Swanson, a longtime friend. "He was a very smart man who greatly contributed to Hawai'i and the U.S. Navy."

Swanson met Wright in 1957 in Washington, D.C., and later succeeded him as commander at Pearl Harbor. "He had a very fine mind," Swanson said. "He could read a brief sheet and recite it verbatim afterward."

Wright was born in Richmond, Va., and attended the University of Virginia, the U.S. Naval Academy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Business School.

According to an obituary that he himself prepared — "He was so organized," said his son, Rusty — the Wrights arrived in America when one of his forefathers earned passage to Jamestown, Va., in 1607 as a cabin boy and was adopted by an American Indian chief for whom he served as an interpreter.

Wright met his wife, Dorothy, while at the Naval Academy. They were married for 70 years until her death in 2004.

Over a long and distinguished military career, Wright served as technical director of the U.S. Navy Research Laboratory, designed aircraft carriers and other warships, and served as production officer at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California, and commander of the Charleston Naval Shipyard in South Carolina.

Wright arrived in Hawai'i in 1964 to serve as commander of the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, a post he held for four years. After retiring from the Navy a year later, he joined the Department of Transportation as a deputy director, and was the director from 1973 to 1977.

Wright also served as a special assistant to Sen. Daniel Inouye from 1977 to 1983.

Wright's term as DOT director was marked by contentious battles over the H-3 project — battles that would stretch on for more than three decades. While Wright argued that the project was necessary to meet the needs of the Windward side, progress was stalled by lawsuits and environmental concerns (the project was approved before the National Environmental Protection Act of 1972).

On the eve of the highway's opening in 1997, Wright told The Advertiser: "The first thing that comes to mind is all of the opposition we enjoyed and how the opponents are responsible for increasing the project's cost from $30 million to $1.3 billion. It was just one lawsuit after another. I'm very happy the day is finally arriving and I apologize for the delay."

Rusty Wright said that while his father was "most visible" on the H-3 project, he considered his greatest achievement to be the reef runway.

"He was very proud that he was able to get the planes away from populated areas as they took off," Rusty Wright said.

Still, Rusty Wright said, his father's greatest dream has yet to be realized. "He always felt our oceans should be our highways."

Wright said his father was dealing with congestive heart failure and other problems related to his age. Yet, his mind was sharp. At his 100th birthday party, held at the Pohai Nani retirement community where he lived, "Alvey," as he was called by friends, waxed eloquent on astronomy, dark energy and physics.

"That was him," Rusty Wright said. "He was well-educated and hard working, and he was always very focused."

Those qualities were apparently evident early on. An entry in the 1931 United States Naval Academy yearbook reads: "Al is ever a consistent worker. No matter what he might take up, he allows nothing to stay him until he has mastered it . . . Someday we shall be saying, 'Why, I knew him when he was a midshipman!' "

In addition to his son, Wright is survived by his daughter-in-law, Pattye Wright; three step-grandsons; and four granddaughters.

Services will be private. Borthwick Mortuary is handling the arrangements.