Robert Dunkerson Orr, the former governor of Indiana, died on March 10 from complications following kidney surgery. He was 86.
Orr attended Yale University and Harvard Graduate School of Business before enlisting in the Army in 1942. After fighting in the Pacific during World War II, he returned to Indiana to work in the Orr Iron Co., the family business.
Orr entered politics in the late 1960s. He was elected as a Republican to the state Senate and became Indiana’s lieutenant governor. In 1981, he ran against John Hillenbrand for governor and beat him by more than 300,000 votes.
In his two-term tenure, Orr energized the economy by luring foreign investment to Indiana. He passed two major tax increases to pay for his education reform bills and to fix the state’s budget problems. Orr also sat on the steering committee of the Education Commission of the States, and was the only governor asked to participate on U.S. Department of Education Secretary William Bennett’s Study Group on Elementary Education.
Unable to run for a third term, Orr left office in 1989. He spent the next three years as the U.S. ambassador to Singapore, then formed Alliance for Global Commerce, a consulting firm.
The Robert D. Orr Scholarship for Global Studies has been established at the University of Southern Indiana. The Interstate 164 Bypass is also named in his honor.