Virgil Orr

Virgil L. Orr (born February 2, 1923) is a retired engineering professor and administrator at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana, who served as a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for District 12 (Lincoln and Union parishes) from 1988-1992.^[1]

Background

In 1940, Orr graduated from Glenmora High School in Glenmora south of Alexandria in southern Rapides Parish. He received his Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Louisiana Tech, where he helped to pay his expenses by working as a student food services waiter from 1940 to 1944.^[2] He procured his Master of Science and Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1948 and 1950, respectively.^[3] He served in the United States Army from 1944 to 1946. He also attended the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.^[4]

On September 1, 1952, Orr joined the Louisiana Tech faculty. In 1966, he was co-author with colleagues Charles A. Killgore and Woodrow W. Chew, Jr., also a registered petroleum engineer of the article, "Vapor–Liquid Equilibrium for the Hexamethyldisiloxane–n-Propyl Alcohol System," published in the Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data.^[5] He was later appointed "Dean of the College" and was serving as vice president of the university, under then president F. Jay Taylor, at the time of his retirement on June 30, 1980.^[6] Louisiana Tech honors Orr with the Virgil Orr Professorship in Chemical Engineering^[7] and the Virgil Orr Undergraduate Junior Faculty Award, presented to non-tenured instructors.^[8]

In 1991, Orr received the prestigious Robert E. Russ award, named for Robert Edwin Russ, the founder of Ruston. In 1994, he received the Tower Medallion from the Louisiana Tech Alumni Association. The next year he was listed among the "Top 100 Alumni" of Louisiana Tech.^[4]

He and his wife, the former Myrtis Chandler (born April 27, 1924), reside in Ruston. Orr is or has been a Sunday school teacher at the large Temple Baptist Church in Ruston.

Legislative election

Orr led the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 24, 1987, with 5,846 votes (44 percent), to the incumbent William R. Sumlin, Jr. (born 1943), also of Ruston, who polled 4,176 ballots (31 percent). Another 3,244 votes (24 percent) went to a third Democrat, Troy Lowe. Sumlin did not contest the November 21 general election, and Orr became representative-elect without a second round of balloting.^[9]

At some point after he left the legislature, Orr switched his affiliation to Republican.^[10]

Orr was himself unseated in the primary held on October 19, 1991, by fellow Democrat and lawyer Jay McCallum of Farmerville, the seat of government of Union Parish, who prevailed, 8,286 (52 percent) to 7,528 (48 percent).^[11]

In 2002, Orr contributed to the unsuccessful candidacy of his then Fifth District U.S. representative, John Cooksey, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully in the nonpartisan blanket primary for the U.S. Senate. Six years earlier, he had contributed to the unsuccessful Republican senatorial candidate Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge, with whom Orr served in the legislature. Both lost to the Democrat Mary Landrieu, who left the state legislature as Orr was arriving.^[12] In 2003, Orr supported the unsuccessful Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Randy Ewing, a former member of the Louisiana State Senate from Jackson Parish.^[13]

After leaving the legislature, Orr served a term on the Louisiana Ethics Board.^[3] In 2010, he was appointed to the Lincoln Parish Library Board.^[14]

References