The Patriot Post® · The Gentle General

Maj. Gen. Robert D. Orton, 70, received his final orders 5 May 2010 but his memorial service in Little Rock was delayed until the 19th so more of those who had served with him in the Chemical Corps could get back from Afghanistan and Iraq to pay their last respects. For to know Robert Orton was to respect him. He was not only an officer and a gentleman but a general and a scholar.

Indeed, he was a chemist of some note – one of the world’s leading authorities on chemical, biological and radioactive weapons. He knew not only how to use them but, even more important as it turned out, how to prevent their ever being used. To borrow a phrase from the boys in the Strategic Air Command way back when, peace was his profession.

Aside from his gentle demeanor, which was particularly impressive in a general, it was the combination of his chemical expertise and administrative skill that most impressed all those who worked with him, and anyone who ever editorialized about him.

Bob Orton certainly impressed me, perhaps because of my own intersection, or maybe I should say collision, with chemistry in college. Lost from Day One, I never did get out of the maze of chemical elements and mathematical formulae that everybody else assured me was quite simple.

In the end, a more than kind professor allowed me to leave the course, granting me a D-minus for purely charitable reasons – but on one condition: that I solemnly swear never, ever again to have anything to do with chemistry so long as I should live. It was a condition I accepted with alacrity, and have lived up to faithfully ever since.

Under the historic chemical-weapons treaty with the Russians, it would fall to Gen. Orton to oversee the safe destruction of the world’s most lethal non-nuclear weapons stored at seven scattered sites – which included the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Arsenal, Anniston, Ala., and Johnston Island in the North Pacific. He would also serve as chief of the Army’s chemical corps and commanding general of the Army Chemical School at Fort McClellan, Ala.

The general had a chestful of decorations, picked up over his years of service around the world since he’d gone through ROTC at the University of Texas at El Paso and taught chemistry at West Point. But you’d never know it from talking to him; he was the most self-effacing of men. When he got his second star, on April Fools Day in 1992, he was heard to observe that “it shows the Army has a sense of humor.”

Bob Orton reminded me of a gunnery officer whom our basic officers’ class had at Fort Sill, the only one who never raised his voice (despite good reason to), and whom we nicknamed Mother Quinnett. Maybe that’s why he was also the most effective instructor we had there.

One distinction may say it all about Bob Orton: When he was a bachelor officer posted to the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant at Charleston in 1979, he sponsored a Brownie troop. And, you can be sure, did an outstanding job of it.

The general’s Arkansas connection was cemented with his marriage to Sylvia Spencer, at one point an ace reporter for United Press International – which proved the perfect preparation for a general’s wife, a slot with its own varied and demanding qualifications. Nothing ever got past Sylvia’s eagle eye. Bob Orton certainly didn’t; she always had an eye for quality.

In the general’s latter years, as he slowly slipped away and a fine mind dimmed, we all mourned long before the memorial service. But were comforted by his years of service not just to his country (and the world) but to every community he was ever part of. For the commander of a military base is also a leading citizen of the town that plays host to it.

Gen. Orton was as concerned about the safety and welfare of his fellow townspeople as he was about that of his troops. As attested by the prompt but painstaking destruction of the chemical stockpile at the Pine Bluff Arsenal – a delicate and demanding assignment in every way. Which he carried out with his usual, deliberate speed. And effectiveness.

Despite the predictions of impending disaster from some of the more excitable elements in the community, the whole operation went off smoothly, even unnoticed for the most part. Which may be the greatest compliment one can pay the man who directed it. He was an expert at, among other things, making haste slowly.

The next time anybody bashes the military, surely the most competent aspect of our federal government, I’m going to think of Robert Dell Orton. With gratitude.

© 2010 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.