Here’s the Hendersonville paper’s story:
Chapel Hill — Gubernatorial candidate Bob Orr remembers the mountains fondly. He spent his childhood in Hendersonville and still owns a vacation home in Yancey County.
After meeting with state editorial writers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Orr drives east toward Raleigh, passing a golf course.
“That is Finley Golf Course, where Hendersonville High School won its first cross country state title in 1963,” says Orr, who ran on the team.
His parents, now deceased, had strong ties to Henderson County. His mother, Minnie Sue Flynn, and her family owned Flynn’s Grocery Store on Seventh Avenue.
“It was a part of the early history of the development of Hendersonville and Henderson County,” says Tom Orr, a distant relative of the former state Supreme Court judge. “It was down near the depot, because that used to be the busiest section of Hendersonville because the train was coming through.”
Objects from Orr’s life in the mountains are everywhere. Sitting in his home, Orr pulls out a framed business card. It reads “F. Scott Fitzgerald.” He says his mother was given the card while taking a bus home to the mountains. Fitzgerald got on the bus, and Minnie Sue let him take her seat. Fitzgerald was headed to Asheville to visit his wife, who had been committed to a mental institution. He signed the business card and handed it to Minnie Sue.
Above Orr’s desk in his campaign office is a photo of Teddy Roosevelt. The Allens, friends of the Orr family who summered in the mountains, had the photo in their home in Henderson County. Orr visited them and always admired the two photographs of Roosevelt on the wall. Junie Allen gave Orr’s parents the photos when her husband died.
“She said, ‘I know Bobby always enjoyed these,'” Orr says.
After graduating from law school at Chapel Hill, Orr returned to the mountains and practiced law in Asheville. Asheville attorney Gary Rowe knew Orr in college and the two practiced law together. His family and the Orr family grew close while they lived in Asheville. Orr married his first wife, Ann Babcock, while in college, and the Rowe family and the Orr family had children who were close in age.
“With the kids, it was always T-ball or it was soccer,” Rowe says. “As the kids were growing up, we would cook out together. We were a stone’s throw from each other as families growing up in Asheville.”
Orr left the mountains when Gov. James Martin appointed him to the North Carolina Court of Appeals. He has lived in Raleigh since the mid-1980s. Orr’s children from his first marriage are grown. His second wife, Louise, and their 15-year-old daughter live in a quiet neighborhood near downtown Raleigh.
Tough fight
Orr’s mountain roots have not paid off so far in his race for the Republican nomination for governor. State Sen. Fred Smith easily won straw polls taken at the Buncombe County and Henderson County conventions in recent weeks. Smith has made a strong push in Western North Carolina, hiring former Henderson County Sheriff George Erwin to put together a network, and holding events in most of the counties.
Orr knows he faces challenges. He does not have the money to put together a political infrastructure like Smith and does not have the name recognition of Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, another Republican candidate.