ROBERT "Skipp" ORR

ORR Robert M. Orr "Skipp" Former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank and the longest serving ambassador in the Obama Administration, died August 12, 2021. He was 68. Previously, he served as president of Boeing Japan and vice president of Motorola in Japan. For the last 30 years, Orr has been at the center of business, government and academia focused on U.S.-Japan relations. The Order of the Rising Sun was conferred upon him by the Emperor of Japan in 2019. Orr earned a doctorate from Tokyo University, a masters from Georgetown University, and a bachelors from Florida Atlantic University. Working his way through graduate school at Georgetown, Orr was hired by his hometown Congressman, Rep. Paul Rogers (D-FL), a highly regarded senior member of the House, whom Orr credited as the inspiration for his career. Rep. Norman Mineta (D-CA) was another longtime mentor. Orr was awarded a scholarship to the University of Tokyo in 1983. His doctoral thesis, "The Emergence of Japan's Foreign Aid Power," was subsequently published by the Columbia University Press, winning the Ohira Prize for best book on the Asia-Pacific region. He was the first director of Temple University Japan's Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, and later was director of Stanford University's Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies. Orr then joined the telecommunications company Motorola, where he was credited with helping to open up Japan's cellphone market. Orr is probably best remembered at Motorola for the cellphones he delivered to ravaged neighborhoods after the Kobe Earthquake in January 1995, when he and several young colleagues stuffed backpacks full of small Motorola pocket phones and handed them to displaced people over several days, sleeping on the floor of a central government building each night. Orr first met Obama at a Boeing event in Chicago when the future president was still an Illinois state senator and the two developed a relationship. Appointed ambassador to the Asian Development Bank by the President, Orr learned that Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, had worked for the ADB in Indonesia. Assembling a collection of her professional papers, Orr presented them to a deeply moved Obama during a private meeting in Manila in 2014. Fluent in Japanese and German, he had spent a year in Germany as a teenager and was an interpreter at the Munich Olympics during the hostage crisis. Orr was also conversant in French. Florida Atlantic University, his undergraduate alma mater, was especially dear to Orr. Upon his retirement from the ADB, he became a lecturer and sought-after mentor for students at FAU. Orr is survived by his wife of 45 years, Mitsuko "Miko" Orr, of Kamakura, Japan, whom he met when she was an exchange student in Florida, and his younger brother Alex, of Portland, Oregon. In addition to his family, he will be profoundly missed by his colleagues from the Obama Administration, by the Florida Atlantic University students he mentored, and by his innumerable friends in Washington, DC, and Japan. Services previously held in August.Services previously held in August.