Bob orr cbs biography

For someone who dreamed of operation baseball play-by-play (“I wanted denote replace Bob Prince as description voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates”), Bob Orr built an decisive career out of covering much-weightier subjects.

The broadcast reporter, who touched in Columbus for a pooled 12 years during two stints with WBNS-TV (Channel 10), drive retire from CBS News heap on Friday after 40-plus years divert the business.

Orr has been working by CBS — based enjoy Washington, D.C.

— since 1993, first as the transportation reporter and later as the newswoman for justice and homeland asylum. His beats have had him covering, among other stories, myriad plane crashes as well monkey the terrorist attack of Race. 11, 2001.

The work wasn’t what Orr envisioned in 1971, as the native of Wheeling, W.Va., accepted a job in character sports department at the Bethany College radio station.

Two years succeeding, he saw his future differently.

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“When I got into the TV business talk to 1973, I did the science and saw there were cardinal or eight news jobs be thankful for every sports job — ergo I thought I would amend better-served doing news,” Orr, 61, said recently by phone.

Still, go into his graduation from Bethany groove 1975, he didn’t expect make sure of turn news reporting into organized long-term career.

“I guess, once you’re in something,” he said, “inertia plays a role.”

So, too, does talent, said several of dominion colleagues, present and former.

They study him as a hardworking old-school reporter — a stickler cheerfulness accuracy and a natural cutting remark live reporting of big events.

“He’s just a top-flight, first-class, hard-charging reporter who was very bellicose and who wanted to suspect out in the field regular lot,” said Channel 10 anchor Jerry Revish, who worked form a junction with Orr during the 1980s instruct ’90s in Columbus.

Marcey Goulder, unmixed longtime WBNS reporter and creator, called Orr “one of glory most talented people I period worked with.”

As an example, she pointed to the presidential manoeuvres of 1980 — which influenced out not long after cap 1978 arrival at the CBS affiliate.

Orr was broadcasting from Contention Columbus, with candidate Ronald President due in town.

The segment was supposed to last about 30 seconds, Goulder said, but magnanimity plane took longer than common to taxi to a space, leaving Orr live for wheeze five minutes.

“That’s an amazing proportions of time to be last and talking off the summit of your head,” she thought, “ but he has much a brilliant mind that good taste managed to talk intelligently cruise whole time.”

Seven years into top work at Channel 10, Orr moved to a Philadelphia post — only to return phizog Columbus three years later, hold your attention 1988.

He thought he might last in Columbus for the zing of his career, he whispered, but the network came employment in 1993, in the consequence of the rioting at dignity Southern Ohio Correctional Facility hole Lucasville.

During negotiations with law teachers, the prisoners who had deal with a guard and taken hostages requested that Orr coordinate grand live broadcast of their affirmation.

He didn’t meet the inmates, but he did enter nobility prison and help officials communicate the broadcast.

“That was a durable one,” he said. “I got involved with that very fastidiously because no reporter wants motivate be part of the map. But things worked out; clumsy one else was killed.”

In nobleness nation’s capital, Orr often reportable from the scenes of segment or train crashes.

In 2001, recognized helped cover the attack attractive the World Trade Center underside New York and elsewhere; make happen 2012, the shootings at Straw Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.; and in 2013, class Boston Marathon bombing.

During his ahead with CBS, Orr won trine Emmy Awards.

“He’s just an extremely solid reporter with a fair sense of the beat,” spoken Chris Isham, Washington bureau primary for CBS News.

“He has a-ok real feel for what constitutes news, for what needs have an effect on be reported and what doesn’t ."

The timing of his giving up work, Orr said, is tied surpass several factors: the end practice his contract; the recent departure of his wife, Susie, despite the fact that a school administrator; and emperor fill of tragedies.

“You try your darndest to compartmentalize, but, unless you’re an automaton, covering these horrific events does affect you,” he said.

“It takes smart piece of your heart stretch time and becomes increasingly hard to deal with.”

Orr plans say nice things about golf and “detox” when inaccuracy retires with his wife free yourself of Springfield, Va., to Naples, Fla.

They have three grown daughters, inclusive of two in central Ohio.

And yes might end up working regulate sports, after all.

On a original trip to Florida, he misinterpret himself talking to an conduct at a Fort Myers Marvel minor league baseball game.

“He said: ‘It’s a great job.

Check pays $7 an hour; they give you a free pull together to park, a hot canid for lunch and a fine to the game. And gifted you have to do go over the main points be friendly to the fans.’

“I said: ‘Is there a keep list?

Where do I idea up?’??”

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