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Bar News - February 7, 2003 A Tribute to Dudley W. Orr "Give the other fella a hand" The law firm of Orr & Reno, P.A., commemorates the life of its founder, Dudley W. Orr, whose recent death has caused us to reflect on the principles by which we would live our lives and practice law. Known as "Dud" or "Dudley" to the more senior members of the firm, and as "Mr. Orr" to most others, he continued to serve as role model and mentor long after his retirement from active practice in the 1970's. Dud was a native of Concord, and was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy (1925); Dartmouth College (1929); the University of Clermont-Ferrand, in France (1930); and Harvard Law School (1933). He was later granted an honorary masters degree and an honorary doctorate degree from Dartmouth, as well as honorary doctorate degrees from St. Anselm's College, and New England College. Upon his admission to the New Hampshire bar in 1933, he practiced with McLane, Davis and Carleton (predecessor to McLane, Graf, Raulerson & Middleton) in Manchester. At that time the United States was still in the midst of the Great Depression. As Dud recalled it, "I was lucky to get through law school in 1933 and find a job at twenty-five dollars a week when at least half of my law school classmates went to work for nothing or at a nominal amount such as five dollars per week." From 1935 to 1937 he was Assistant Attorney General. Because the Attorneys General to whom he reported were, in his own words "... happy to leave most of the work to me...," he had a hand in establishing the Liquor commission, the Racing Commission, the Water Resources Board, the Unemployment Compensation Commission, and the Tobacco Tax. He also argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the Public Utilities Commission. He became Acting Attorney General in 1937, and was then appointed a member of the Tax Commission, which he served from 1937 to 1942. Since his position on the Tax Commission was only part-time, Dud went into private practice in 1937, occupying an office next to Benjamin W. Couch (pronounced "Kootch"). Couch was a well-known Concord lawyer who practiced with Henry W. Stevens and William L. Stevens, whose father, Lyman Dewey Stevens, had practiced law in Concord from 1847 to 1909 and had been New Hampshire's delegate to the dedication ceremony at the battlefield in Gettysburg in 1862. The Orr and Reno law library still contains many of Lyman D. Stevens' original lawbooks. Although not known as a plaintiff's attorney, Dud was not afraid to enter the fray on behalf of a deserving client. The memory of one such client, Rose R___, he noted, "... always brings back the aroma of a warm kitchen full of steamy underwear or the other perfume the French call 'le bon goût de la terre,' cow manure." His account of the colorful (and fragrant) story of Rose's case gives an insight into Dud's practice in those early years (as well as an inkling of his wry sense of humor): One day in May, Rose came into the School Street office with a new spousal equivalent, both redolent of the homey fragrance of the barn, just as I was about to take a daughter home from the Kimball School. I was so happy to welcome an old and loyal client that I lingered to hear her ask if I knew a Mrs. P______ of Weare. Assured that I did not, Rose said that the preceding fall she had sold Mrs. P_______ two loads of slab wood. It was not much good for wood, she said, but pretty good for slab wood. Mrs. P_____ had paid for one load but, though often requested, she had refused to pay the balance of $7.50 for the second load. Rose continued, saying that she would not have come in to see us about so small a matter, but for the offensive language that Mrs. P_____ had used to express her refusal. I asked Rose what words Mrs. P____ had used. Rose said that she would rather not say. I replied that we couldn't help her unless we knew all the facts. Reluctantly Rose then said, "She told me I could kiss her a_ _ . Mr. Orr, that made me so mad that I said to her, 'Mrs. P___, I aim to get that $7.50 even if I have to give a lawyer half of it.'" Unable to resist such a generous fee, we concluded the matter by getting judgment for $7.50 and costs. During World War II, Dud was a lieutenant in the Naval Reserves, and served in the Office of Price Administration and as Counsel to the Department of the Navy in Washington, D.C., where his roommate was Clark Clifford, who later went on to be Secretary of Defense under President Johnson. Ben Couch died in 1945 and Dud returned to Concord from Washington in March of 1946, whereupon he received a inquiry about employment possibilities from one Robert H. Reno, of Macomb, Illinois, a graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale Law School, a former Marine, and Special Agent with the FBI. Despite Dud's unabashedly asking the now-politically-incorrect "... Are you married and if so do you have any children?..." and despite warning him "...that he ran a risk of starvation if it turned out that there should not be enough work in our office for two lawyers...," Bob Reno joined Dud Orr in practice and the law firm of Orr and Reno was born. Dud oversaw the growth of the firm, focusing on native New Hampshire talent and, at least in the earlier years, connections to Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. In addition to the present members of the firm, Orr and Reno has had a number of notable attorneys associated with it at one time or another: Bill Green, Gene Struckoff, Charley Toll, Francis Johnson (who came to the firm after he retired as Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court), Dort Bigg, The Honorable H. Philip Howorth of the Nashua District Court, and Justice David H. Souter of the United States Supreme Court, to mention only a few. His occasional forays into court notwithstanding, Dud considered himself primarily a business attorney. He observed that with the loyal and capable help of Ben Couch's secretary, Pearl Halloran, the firm was able to keep a considerable number of the Couch trust accounts and add many more, following the premise of offering legal work not only to businesses, but also "cradle to grave" representation of business owners, and their spouses and children, by including financial planning and estate planning services. A number of trusts set up by Dud during the 1940's and 1950's continue today as accounts managed by the Orr and Reno Trust Department. Dud will be remembered not only for his ability to found and inspire a law firm, but also for his untiring commitment to serve the greater world beyond the legal arena. Justice Souter has recalled that Dud liked to quote a saying of his father's: "Your obligation is to give the other fella a hand," and Dud certainly did that. He served on the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College for thirty years, from 1941 to 1971. As the father of two girls and the grandfather of four girls, he was an early champion of equal opportunities for women, and he served as co-chair of the College's Trustee Study Committee on the Education of Women, which led to Dartmouth's decision to accept women in 1972. The Valley News reported that in history professor Mary Kelly's keynote address at Dartmouth's celebration of 25 years of coeducation, she cited a speech which Dud had given to the Dartmouth Alumni Council in 1971: "No college can be superlatively good in view of what is happening in our country today without women among its undergraduates." That egalitarian view has been a cornerstone of Orr and Reno, which was one of the first New Hampshire law firms to actively recruit a female lawyer: Mary Susan Leahy, in 1971, who went on to become the firm's leader from 1995 to 1998. Dud's legacy endures: of the 35 lawyers actively practicing at Orr and Reno today, 17 are women. Dud lent a hand to the "other fella" by also serving on the board of trustees of Phillips Exeter Academy, the Merrimack County Savings Bank, the Rolfe and Rumford Home, and the New Hampshire Historical Society. He served his community of Concord by sitting as a member of the Planning board for 30 years, and by spearheading the drive to build Concord's first indoor skating rink, the Douglas N. Everett Arena. He served on the boards of directors of numerous businesses, including the Bank of New Hampshire, Concord Natural Gas Corporation (of which he was also president for 26 years), Merchants Mutual Insurance Company, New England Electric System, United Life and Accident Insurance Company (of which he was Chairman of the Board for 16 years), and Spaulding Fibre Company; served as president and director of Northern Railroad and of Peerless Insurance Company; and served as vice president, trust officer and director of Mechanics National Bank and Bank of New Hampshire. He also dedicated himself to philanthropic causes, and took pride in having been instrumental in establishing the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. Chuck Leahy, who was the eighth lawyer hired at Orr and Reno, and has been with the firm since 1963, said that when he first got to Orr and Reno he "...hardly ever saw Dud, because he was always in his car going to a board meeting somewhere." Dud was a devoted family man, who wrote letters to his granddaughters in Latin and French, who would recite "The Charge of the Light Brigade" to them while driving in the car, and who would complain to them about the decline of the subjunctive in contemporary English. Dud's impact on this law firm and his approach to life and the practice of law is aptly reflected in what one of the firm's partners (John Malmberg, who first joined Orr and Reno in 1978, seven years after Dud's retirement from active practice) wrote to everyone in the firm upon learning of Dud's death: "Built in his image, our firm has attracted many people over the years who have shared his values and his high standards. I am very proud to be a part of this institution-and it is an institution-and I hope all of you value the connection to Mr. Orr you have from working in his law firm. I hope you recognized the symmetry in his life which also characterizes our firm and the lawyers who work here. He did much for the world around him as a matter of public service but also as a professional concerned about business. If you value your connection to Mr. Orr, you have a responsibility to his legacy to spend your time here productively-with the goal that when your time here ends, you will leave his law firm better than it was when you arrived." This tribute has been provided by Orr and Reno, P.A.
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