Orr Calls It Quits After Five Years in Pilot Seat : Air Force Secretary Bids Farewell; Will Return to Pasadena

It was a breezy, backslapping day that met well with a hale fellow like Air Force Secretary Verne Orr.

He was among women and men he unflinchingly considers family. That made his schedule more of a comfortable celebration than a rigid ceremony: a groundbreaking for a new wing at the Air Force Museum here, a light reception in the novelty of a restored World War II Nissen hut commemorating American fighter pilots who fought for Britain. . . .

Orr wore the uniform he favors. A blue general’s jacket embroidered with his name and secretariat and a white silk pilot’s scarf. The outfit, he has said, is his separation from pure civilian. It is more appropriate, he added, for the military salutes he prefers to return. It brings him closer to his people.

One Big Handshake

Orr, 68, avuncular, old Pasadena, tall, striding, risible, was one big handshake at the dedication: “Sure I remember . . . good to see you . . . you bet . . . my pleasure . . . you might be retired but to me you’ll always be colonel . . . you bet.”

There was a special touch to this day. Escorts and dignitaries knew it would be Orr’s last official visit to the base. This month, after almost five years as secretary, the longest term in the history of the office, Orr will retire.

Orr, the 14th secretary since the Air Force earned independence from the Army in 1947, said he was saddened at saying goodby. At lecterns and in private, he spoke of his satisfaction and thanks and reflections.

Then the moment fell apart.

An emergency message came from Washington. Joan Orr, his wife of 45 years, had fallen at home in Annandale, Va. Two years ago she had fallen and splintered her left hip. Now the right hip was broken.

Orr shortened the Ohio evening. His appearance at a graduation dinner of the Air Force Institute of Technology was trimmed to 15 minutes. The following morning’s activities were canceled. Classified briefings on Soviet weapons systems went unpresented.

Flying Back

Long before midnight, Orr was aboard a blue, white and mirror-buffed aluminum C-140 Jetstar of the 89th Military Airlift Wing (the hand-picked unit that operates presidential aircraft) and flying back to Andrews AFB, Md.

At 27,000 feet over the Virginias, still in banquet black tie and tuxedo, nibbling potato chips, Orr spoke of his wife. She had been at his side during worldwide visits to more than 100 Air Force bases. For every tour, there had been her written report on the female and family areas of Air Force life.

As she had supported his 1981 decision to accept the post of secretary, so he had understood her need for retirement. Orr wasn’t scheduled to leave office until next summer. Then came the first fall and medical advice that Joan Orr’s life would be easier at their single-story home in warmer Pasadena. So Orr rolled retirement forward.

Their departure from Washington, Orr said, was to have been toasted by at least 20 parties. The Air Force Assn., a group so very close to their lives, had planned a special farewell function. Now they would have to cancel.

Orr was saddened. But not for himself, not for a loss of celebration and accolade. His feelings were for the separation of a partnership and the opportunity to stand hand-in-hand while Joan Orr received her due applause and spoke their fond goodbys.

“My wife and I are close,” he explained. The man and the voice were tired from a 15-hour day that wasn’t done. “I don’t know whether you’ve sensed this or not, but we think of this (office) as a partnership. She is just as much a part of the Air Force as I am . . . and I think the Air Force recognizes that.”

When Mr. Orr went to Washington it was not as the very model of the modern service secretary.

Said Barry Goldwater, a 40-year friend, retired Air Force reserve general and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee: “I don’t think Verne knew which end of the airplane went down the runway first.”

A slight exaggeration, Orr grins, but close enough to the truth. After all, his only military experience was in the Navy as a supply officer during World War II. As a Chrysler-Plymouth dealer in Pasadena for 15 years, his civilian field clearly was wheels, not wings.

And in the corridors of government, the potential for fun from those two credentials clearly overrode Orr’s background as former head of California’s Department of Motor Vehicles and his five-year term as state finance director during the Reagan governorship.

“My (Air Force) appointment was received with underwhelming enthusiasm on the part of many people who said: ‘What is a used car salesman and a former Navy officer doing running the Air Force?’ ” Orr said. He laughed hugely. Next question: Would you buy a new Air Force from this man? “Exactly. I still get that thrown up at me in humor once in a while.”

Orr didn’t even ask to become the Air Force’s first civilian. In view of previous loyalties, and with his inside track as deputy director of the Office of the President-Elect during the 1981 transition, he had offered himself as secretary of the Navy. Then President Reagan telephoned with the alternative offer.

So on a long-held premise (“The woman who sells furs at Bullock’s doesn’t have to wear a mink”), a wing (“Whether director of finance or secretary of the Air Force . . . it is far more management than technical details”) and a prayer (“If I had not served in the military, I think I would have been very handicapped”), Orr buckled down to his $75,100-per-annum post.

There were three-hour briefings, twice a day, for almost two weeks. He apprenticed at the elbow of outgoing secretary and Carter-appointee Hans Mark. Office work. Homework. “I got fed by a fire hose on the operation of the United States Air Force,” Orr said.

No time for drafting blueprints. No room for anything, he said, beyond getting caught up in the day-to-day breathlessness of manning, equipping and maintaining the U.S. Air Force; population 850,000, operations worldwide, its business--war and peace.

“Looking back, maybe I should have gone away for three days and had some big thoughts and come back and said: ‘I’ve got a path, a direction, this is the way we go,’ ” explained Orr. “But it didn’t work that way.

“I (just) took the Air Force as I found it, with an emphasis that I wanted to put on people, directed my attention to certain hardware items . . . and then I worked on trying to find people who could get my philosophy of management.”

According to aides, the record--even to some Pentagon observers who aren’t comfortable with what they call the secretary’s “down home, downright simple” approach to military affairs--shows that Orr’s dedication to effective equipment and motivated personnel will long hallmark his administration.

‘Most Prideful Achievement’

An early act that would eventually become “my most prideful achievement” was his recommendation that the controversial B-1 program, canceled by President Carter in 1977, should be reactivated. In June, below budget and five months ahead of schedule, the first of 100 long-range, supersonic, multi-role bombers was delivered to the Strategic Air Command. With Orr riding as a crew member.

“I urged strongly that we go for the B-1,” Orr said. “And now, 4 1/2 years later, I’m not a bit sorry.”

Under Orr, a new troop carrier, the C5B, also below budget and delivery deadlines, will be in the air in December. At Northrop Corp. plants in California, the advanced-technology, super-secret Stealth bomber, capable of undetectable penetrations of Soviet radar, is under construction.

Last month, Orr released Air Force specifications for the Advanced Tactical Fighter. Eight aerospace companies are currently developing proposals and prototypes for this offensive-defensive push into the next century.

He will be remembered as the secretary who dangled and pitted General Electric against Pratt & Whitney in a continuing, high-stakes contest to supply engines for the F-15 and F-16 fighters. The unique competition has resulted in engine warranties, reduced costs and increased time between overhauls.

Orr temporarily barred one manufacturer from new Air Force contracts pending the resolve of fraud indictments against the company; ordered others to return $208 million in excess profits; and has launched a new system of product, price and ordering procedures to halt purchases of those notorious $7,000 coffee pots and $600 toilet seats.

He insists, however, that the items weren’t overpriced. But they certainly were built to excessive specifications that resulted in astronomical costs. “We had a (in-flight) coffee pot that would boil water in three minutes,” he said. “Well, those troops are going to be aboard for a four- or five-hour flight. Why not have a (less-expensive) coffee pot that will boil coffee in 10 minutes?

“I think, actually, it was built to boil coffee at 1,700 feet below sea level. We don’t fly that low very often.”

‘Just Bureaucracy At Work’

Overspecification, Orr believes, stems largely from military caution. “I think it is just a matter of safety,” he explained. “Nobody wants to be criticized because a part broke and they trace it back and say: ‘Well, you didn’t watch it.’ It’s just bureaucracy at work, saving their necks . . . our necks, because I’m part of it.”

Then there was the problem of priceless items from different parts.

It arrived with a citizen’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus demanding that Orr release “the remains of the extraterrestrial being or beings” the Air Force allegedly is holding.

The action--sought by Citizens Against Unidentified Flying Objects and since denied by federal court--claimed the aliens are being subjected to “unwarranted deprivation of their right to travel.”

True or false? “Those are the little people we have rented out in the automatic tellers,” Orr deadpanned. “They count the money out when you put your card in.”

As a car dealer in 1946, Verne Orr gave his mechanics the first heated garage in Pasadena. “We put in hoists so they didn’t have to get down on creepers . . . we put in hot water for their showers . . . we tried to work with people.”

As an Air Force secretary designate 35 years later, Orr told a Senate confirmation hearing that his priorities continue to pivot on people.

“In the Air Force I think the morale of our people is the most important thing we’ve got,” says Orr today. “I’ve worked very hard to improve their living conditions, improve their working condition where I can . . . to improve their pay, to improve their allowances. . . .”

That concern has given Secretary and Mrs. Orr unique Christmas holidays: “We went up to Greenland for Christmas the first year. The second year we went to Alaska and did the same thing at a remote post . . . 15 Air Force types and 40 civilians running a radar.

“The third year . . . we went to Iceland. Just to tell people: ‘By golly, we appreciate what you’re doing.’ ”

With Mrs. Orr, he has visited 100 Air Force bases and without her, he has toured 100 more. “I doubt if any secretary has been to more (bases),” said Orr, “going out to the hangars, shaking hands with the mechanics with greasy hands, (asking) ‘How do you like it?’ ‘Getting the right tools?’ ”

He is schoolboy proud of having flown in almost two dozen Air Force aircraft, handling the controls of a B-1B and riding through a gentle routine in a T-38 Talon of the Thunderbirds aerobatic team.

It’s not joy-riding. “It’s trying to learn something about the plane because I’m not a pilot,” he continued. “It’s to say to them (pilots): ‘Look, I’m interested in your job.’ ”

Quality of Service Life

In the 700 speeches Orr has made while in office, personal examples of his commitment to Air Force people and the quality of service life have become recurring themes. “This year (1985) we will bring in 17% women in our enlisted force,” went presentations from the Institute of Contemporary Issues in Los Angeles to the National Security Forum at Montgomery, Ala. “We have some 400 women pilots and navigators in training . . . we started with five Family Support Centers and now have 34. . . .”

And although he personally does not believe there are any American servicemen still being held captive in southeast Asia, Orr says he has refused to close Air Force books on the POW-MIA issue.

“I called in the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency twice to talk about the missing prisoners. I went over to the National Security Agency and I said: ‘I want a special briefing. Tell me anything you can tell me about any intercept of communications that might affect prisoners.’ ”

Then he studied the cases of 11 Air Force MIAs who had not been reclassified by the Air Force as presumed killed in action. “I changed all but one to killed in action,” he stated.

The lone airman is Charles Shelton (whose wife, Marian, lives in San Diego), shot down over Laos in April, 1965. In the two decades since, Shelton has been promoted from captain to colonel.

“He was seen on the ground, alive,” Orr said. “We know that he landed at least if not unhurt, well enough to signal.

“Why did I do it? Because in the testimonies I read, several families had gone to Hanoi and they said they were laughed at. They were told: ‘Why are you interested in pursuing this? Your government has written this off.’

“I say: ‘We have not written them all off until you (Hanoi) tell us what happened to Col. Shelton.’ He represents our determination . . . it is making certain that the family knows that we haven’t closed it out.”

Such stands have brought Orr an unusual popularity--an affection acknowledged even by those who prefer more flamboyant, firecracker service secretaries.

Said Goldwater: “Verne Orr is by far the best secretary we’ve had.”

Said a retired colonel, a former Air Force attache: “He is attuned to everything the Air Force needs. . . . I don’t think he has ever opposed any move to improve the quality of Air Force life.”

Morale Is Higher

Pentagon statements and statistics report that recruitment and re-enlistment of quality Air Force personnel is up. Morale is higher than it has been in recent years, Orr noted. The retention rate for pilots (those staying in the service rather than leaving for airline careers) has gone from 25% in 1979 to 75% in 1984.

But Orr does not take all the credit for these advances. When he took office, he said, the Air Force “was recovering from the dismal days of Vietnam, it was recovering from the relatively sparse budgets of the first Carter years . . . it was on an uptick.

“The first thing the President did--which helped us immensely--he went for an 11% raise the first year and 14 the next so that a 25% raise in two years made people feel good. Then we started putting spare parts in the bins. . . .

“I just was lucky. I rode the coattails.”

Yet the current high, he believes, will not last.

He is disappointed by current no-growth budgets that he believes will delay equipment purchases, stall base improvements, and reduce Air Force efficiency and morale.

Orr is concerned by a Soviet educational system that he says is training 300,000 engineers a year versus 60,000 in the United States. Eventually, he claims, Russia will overtake the United States in quality production.

“They’ve always been ahead quantitatively,” he said, “(and) at the rate they’re going, I don’t think we’re going to have a qualitative edge (for) much more than 10 years.”

The gap might have remained wider, Orr said, if American manufacturers hadn’t bragged about product advances.

“They put slick ads in magazines that tell the Soviets things that otherwise they would have (a) hard time finding out,” he stated. “We brag about how fast our planes will climb, or how high they’ll go . . . same with missiles, same with ships, same with radar.

“You can’t find anybody telling you how high a Soviet plane will go or how fast or what is its radar capability.”

“We’ve built up the readiness. We’re ready to fight and we’re equipped to fight, but we’re not equipped to fight for 60 days. We haven’t yet completed our buildup, largely of munitions, missiles mainly.

“I’m talking about a conventional war. I’m not talking (nuclear) MX.”

But what of a nuclear war?

“I find it hard to visualize a nuclear war . . . to me a nuclear war is the end of all. I think it is unthinkable.”

In their many travels, Joan Orr’s firm but somewhat official dedication has been to Air Force family units, whether in Tokyo or Singapore, Weisbaden or Alaska, Istanbul or Manila . . . for wherever there are Air Force personnel, there are spouses and families, with all the domestic difficulties of transient families anywhere.

“The first trip . . . was down to Langley (AFB, Va.),” she said. “We both very quickly realized that there is a definite woman part to the Air Force. The wife, the mother, the partner. It was from here that we began to . . . feel that I could be more a part of it by visiting the family-oriented facilities on the base.”

Interviewed shortly before the fall that would end these duties as First Lady of the Air Force, Mrs. Orr said a major step in her work was helping service wives recognize their importance as partners in a husband’s position.

Here were women frequently on the move, worrying about children who might attend four different schools during their high school years. Overseas wives from Korea, the Philippines and Japan facing the problems of adjustment to the American culture. There was the couple with a disabled child who were sent to an overseas base some 80 miles from the nearest special care center.

“I think they are marvelous women,” she said. “They’re courageous . . . they are important people . . . and I like to have them know these things.”

Counseling to soften the trauma of military retirement was added to the work of base Family Support Centers at the suggestion of Joan Orr. She relayed complaints of inadequate medical facilities at a base in North Dakota and stayed with the situation until there were plans for a new hospital.

A Simple Formula

Mrs. Orr, former president of the Pasadena Arts Council and still on the board of the Art Center College of Design, said her formula was quite simple: “You visit, you come back, you talk about it, you bring it to someone’s attention.”

During one visit to Bitburg AB, Germany, she was handed the problem of married personnel and their maternity wear. Or rather the lack of it. “Three young women came up to talk to me . . . and they were all pregnant . . . and they said: ‘Couldn’t you please help us to get a maternity blouse?’ ” she recalled. “They said they (Air Force) had got a maternity jacket but they had to wear regular blouses ‘and we just keep unbuttoning them as we grow.’ ”

Twelve months and several reports later, the blouses became an issue. “I doubt very much if they would have had the courage to talk to Verne about that,” she said.

Now the end is beginning.

Portraits, plaques, desk sets, clocks, swords, belt buckles, photographs, badges, hats, flags, busts, airplane models, photographs, mugs and other souvenir presentations of world travel and high office will soon be packed and shipped. The family Toyota (with “SEC AF” on the personal plates) has already been driven back to California.

The Orr’s two-story home in Annandale is up for a quick sale ($209,000) and their single-story ranch ouse in Pasadena is ready for its former occupants.

Orr, who turns 69 this month, will miss the Air Force life and his people who have been “so friendly and so gracious . . . the greatest people I have ever worked for.

“And I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say that anybody but a fool would have to admit he’d miss the perks,” he grinned. “Who gets an honor guard and red carpet . . . who else gets to fly in his own plane that stands by to take him home in an emergency?”

The emergency. The broken hip. It has clouded the retirement.

With Joan Orr in Arlington Hospital, the secretary canceled an appearance at last month’s Navy-Air Force football game (he roots for Air Force: “My Navy experience was so long ago”) and won his bet (a nylon flight jacket) from Secretary of the Navy John Lehman in absentia.

Asst. Secretary Tidal McCoy filled in for Orr on an official visit to Panama. With doctors predicting six weeks in bed for Mrs. Orr, there could be no hope of the couple making their Air Force Assn. farewell.

That prognosis, however, did not allow for the loyalty of Mrs. Orr.

And on Thursday, exactly three weeks after her tumble, Verne Orr escorted his wife to the Mark Radisson Hotel, Alexandria, Va., and the AFA’s fond farewell.

She was in a wheelchair, but the partners were there and together.