81-year-old brings ‘quiet wisdom’ to UT campus

AUSTIN, TEXAS — Terry Orr is beginning a master’s program at the University of Texas, and the 81-year-old already has his backpack filled with textbooks.

Orr obtained his second undergraduate degree from the University of Texas in 2017, about 55 years after completing engineering degrees at Texas A&M. In that span of time, he enlisted in the Army in the 1960s, where he worked as a research engineer drilling into ice caps. He spent his career working in marine construction and oil operations, notching eight years in Saudi Arabia; and in 1992 he moved to Bastrop, where he served as the town’s mayor between 2008 and 2014.

This week, Orr’s insatiable curiosity brings him back to another year at UT, where he’ll spend his 82nd birthday in the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

“It beats sitting around cussing the government everyday,” he joked.

The octogenarian has already grown accustomed to being in classrooms full of students young enough to be his grandchildren. During his undergraduate years, which he spent studying classical archeology at UT’s College of Liberal Arts, he learned from his peers.

“You don’t want to be the old guy that talks all the time — old people, they want to talk all the time. And you don’t want to be the old guy that knows everything,” Orr said. “These people know a whole lot more than I do.”

Professors say Orr brings a level of charm and insight to discussions that only 80 years of life experience can supply.

“With Terry, it was exactly the right balance of a different sense of perspective and a kind of quiet wisdom that the 19-year-olds in the class might have been lacking, and a willingness to learn and be open to things,” said Adam Rabinowitz, an associate professor in the Department of Classics. “I haven’t had anybody like that in my classes.”

Says Tom Palamia, an Armstrong Professor of Classics at UT, “Terry was the guy who would keep everything at the right level and ask good questions.”

Both professors agreed on one point: Orr’s enrollment in the university was not impressive just because of his advanced age, it demonstrates how learning doesn’t always need to be tied to career gains or economic advancement.

“The problem in American society, you’re defined by the work that you do instead of who you are as a human being,” Palamia said. “To have people who are at the university simply to be at the university, they’re not there training for a future job, they’re there to explore who they are — that’s Terry.”

TNS Terry Orr will spend his 82nd birthday at the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas. “It beats sitting around cussing the government everyday,” he joked.