Lee Orr

Lee Orr, age 87 passed to new horizons on Januar 11, 2020 after a long career of 50 years in aviation teaching the Spartanburg community and over 1000 students how to fly. She earned her pilot’s license in 1965. She was inducted into the South Carolina Aviation Hall of Fame in 2001. She participated in air races including the All Women’s Transcontinental Air Race, the Air Race Classics, and the Powder Puff Derby. She founded the Blue Ridge Chapter of The Ninety-Nines, a women pilots’ organization. Orr was also a member of the Arkansas Chapter of The Ninety-Nines and later served as secretary and governor of the organization at regional and national levels and on its international board of directors from 1989-1996.

Additionally, she received a number of awards and honors in her lifetime, including the Evelyn Bryan Johnson Award, recognizing career contributions in aviation, in 2006, and was a 1988 Amelia Earhart scholarship recipient. She was instrumental in getting the Spartanburg Pilot’s Association started and was one of its founding members. “She pushed two or three of the guys to get that started. She felt it was one of the most important things the Spartanburg downtown airport could do for its pilots,” said Joe Sessoms, public relations chair of the Spartanburg Pilot’s Association. The association was a way to keep pilots up to date on safety guidelines, something Orr was very passionate about. Off the airfield, Orr was a dedicated wife and mother of three daughters, Willauer, Kimi Kauer, and Babbs Brown. “She was a women’s libber. She loved to travel, loved people, loved the church,” Willauer said. “She was the matriarch of our family,” Kennedy said Orr was very close to her daughters. “She raised three best friends,” Kennedy said. Willauer described her mother as a beautiful and vivacious person who loved life and loved people and who was loved by all her students and everyone who knew her. “She loved everybody that she met,” Willauer said.

When up in the air with her mother, Orr would often remark that she loved flying because she felt closer to the angels and God. Now she soars with the angels watching over her sisters of The Ninety-Nines!