AUSTIN, TX — After a successful career in engineering and a post as mayor of Bastrop, Texas, Terry Orr longed to reach another accomplishment: He wanted to return to college. At age 80, he did just that, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Archaeology at the University of Texas at Austin two years ago.
And he’s not done yet. After that rewarding academic experience, Orr, now 82, re-took the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) 50 years after taking it the first time, aiming for a Master’s in the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. Orr started his studies in the program with the beginning of the school year at UT-Austin.
In an interview with Patch, Orr said it was his wife’s studies in medieval history from Rice University that got his wheels turning about pursuing additional degrees for himself.
“I was always on the outside looking in,” he said of his wife’s academic work that he found fascinating. Given his engineering background, he helped his wife along by writing a computer program for her so she could input all her data into various categories, he said. Along the way, his own intellectual curiosity was piqued as he assimilated his wife’s knowledge.
His academic dreams were also informed by real-world experience in the oil-operations business, having spent much time in far-flung places such as Saudi Arabia, Central America and South America.
“I was always interested in their museums,” he said of his experience during off-time from work. He noted the pre-Columbian artifacts he saw, statues, ancient draperies, structures built in the fifth century. “My God!” he exclaimed in recalling all the wondrous sights from back in the day. “That kind of drove me when I did go back to school to study the classical Greek and Italian archaeology. That really sparked my sparkler.”
In the intervening years, he gave increasingly serious thought about going back to school. But first, he would serve as mayor of Bastrop, a town some 30 miles southeast of Austin, where he served from 2008-14.
“I would say my biggest accomplishment was working with everybody during the wildfires of 2011,” he recalled of his mayoral stint. “The major thing is, we kept the town from burning down. It was very much a cooperative effort among city, county and federal officials,” he said, modestly downplaying his own role as a calming presence during the natural disaster.
“It’s not just sticks and stones,” he said of the devastation wrought by the wildfires. “It’s a grandmother’s dresser, a child’s artwork, that kind of thing,” he added in the way of examples of what was lost. All told, some 1,700 homes were in the path of the wildfires, heightening the need for leadership in assuaging residents while taking action to prevent destruction.
Before that, he ran his own offshore deep-water-drilling business. This was the stint when his intellectual curiosity was piqued in beholding the various artifacts from other cultures.
Flash-forward to his 80th year, finding himself in the classroom after a long absence from those halcyon undergraduate years. His youth gone, he marveled at his younger peers’ own intellect and energy: “I learned a lot from them,” he said. “Young people are bright, very sharp, and I’m about a nickel short of response time sometimes,” he recalled of his reflexive response to the academic rigors.
But he had his own tricks up his sleeve to make up for that. “I can add dimension to a discussion that no one has experience about, even the younger professors,” he said with palpable pride. That kind of insight can only come from an event-filled life like his.
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Which is not to say going back to school was easy, he added in recalling his six semesters back at UT-Austin. “It’s a whole lot harder than you think it might be,” he said. “It was terribly difficult for me, and I studied a lot. It’s not just like going to school and sitting there to listen and comment on stuff. It’s a lot of work, writing papers and doing research.”
Prone to descriptive analogies, he summarized the college experience this way: “One of the things I’ve learned is you can’t find today’s opportunities using yesterday’s flashlight. You’ve got to keep upgrading those discovery tools. When I went back, I told people I’m just here to tread water, to graduate. And I did.”
The classic vision of retirement — sitting around and taking it easy amid a life of leisure — was always anathema to him, even in the prime of his work years. “You kind of get stuck…I will try to say this in a nice manner. I saw a lot of people older than me, and all they thought of was retiring. It was the sum of their conversation. It was amazing how many people would retire in their mid 50s!”
So the graduate completed his courses, passed and walked the aisle clothed with cap and gown to retrieve his hard-earned degree. Surely it was time to party hard and celebrate big time after, no? To a degree, there was an after-graduation party involved but decidedly commensurate to his current speed: Orr told Patch he was joined by his wife, son and daughter-in-law for some well-deserved ice cream.