Fred W. O’Green, 77; Chairman of Litton Industries

Fred W. O’Green, the Iowa mailman’s son who rose to become chairman of Litton Industries for much of the 1980s, has died in Los Angeles, the company announced Tuesday.

O’Green, 77, died Oct. 2 after an undisclosed lengthy illness, a Litton spokeswoman said.

When he became only the second chief executive in Litton’s history in October 1981, he set out to recast the 1950s-style conglomerate with its hands in businesses ranging from aircraft and missile navigation and communications systems to desktop calculators and microwave ovens.

O’Green, who had been Litton’s president since 1972, succeeded Charles B. “Tex” Thornton, who co-founded the firm with Roy Ash in 1953. Thornton had been one of the so-called “whiz kids” who revitalized Ford Motor Co. in the 1950s.

O’Green put his decisive stamp on Litton, refocusing the company in a massive restructuring that involved the divestiture of 25 corporate divisions. Analysts credited him with leaving the company in good shape when he stepped down from the chairmanship in 1988.

“He disassembled the house that Thornton built, which had a lot of parts that were out of sync,” one analyst said. “He rationalized the company.”

Ash, a former Litton president, once called O’Green “one of the world’s experts in defense electronics, and certainly during his time he brought the company to a position of leadership.”

O’Green joined Litton in 1962, moving over from Lockheed, where he was technical director of space programs and assistant general manager of the space division.

Ash credited O’Green with the strong growth in Litton’s defense electronics operations. In 1964, O’Green became the first person to receive an award from the Air Force Systems Command for his outstanding achievement in directing the development and production of the Agena D satellite program.

He became a Litton vice president in 1965, and moved up to senior vice president the next year as head of the defense systems group. He was named an executive vice president in 1967 and became a member of the board the following year.

When O’Green became chairman and chief executive in 1981, he inherited a difficult labor situation in which Litton had a number of bitter disputes with its unions. He eventually made peace with the unions and formed a special labor management committee.

O’Green was born March 25, 1921 in Mason City, Iowa. Although his name sounds Irish, it is Swedish. Immigration officers changed his grandparents’ family name from Ogren to O’Green.

O’Green, whose father was a mailman in Mason City, worked his way though Iowa State University by playing the clarinet. He earned his degree in electrical engineering in 1943 and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland in 1949.

He and his wife, Mildred, were high school sweethearts who married two days after he graduated from Iowa State. They immediately moved to Washington for his new job as an electrical engineer at the U.S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory.

In addition to his wife, O’Green is survived by two sons, two daughters, a sister and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Thursday at 10:30 a.m. at Bel-Air Presbyterian Church, and a reception at the Los Angeles Country Club will follow.