* Orville E. Beal; Former Prudential President

Orville E. Beal, 84, president of the Prudential Insurance Co. from 1962 to 1969. Born in Monvue, Pa., as one of 12 children of a Prudential salesman, Mr. Beal worked briefly in the coal mines before starting as a $15-a-week clerk in Prudential’s Newark, N.J., office in 1926. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in night school at Rutgers University, as he moved up Prudential’s corporate ladder. He became vice president in 1947 and executive vice president in 1957. During Mr. Beal’s tenure as president, Prudential became the largest insurer in the world as measured in assets. At his retirement in 1969, the company had 57,000 employees and assets of $26 billion. On Saturday in Livingston, N.J., of heart failure after a fall.