A native of Arkansas, Orval came to settle with his family in Bakersfield, Calif., where he attended high school and Bakersfield College. Service to his country enabled Orval to attend San Jose State on the G.I. bill, and it was there he obtained his teaching credential which he used to get a position at Porterville High School in 1951. It was there he continued to teach and coach for 29 years, until his retirement in 1980.

Throughout the years, Orval maintained an active interest in field and track — with a special love for the high jump and the pole vault. In 1960, he journeyed to Rome, Italy, to see the Olympic Games. While there, he met a coach who had invented a pole vault training device. Orval returned home with what he had learned, made his own pole vault trainer, and began marketing it as “Gillett’s Easy Vault.” Orval’s inventive nature also led him to develop his own answer to what he saw as a need among high school and collegiate athletes. Young shot putters could really use graduated, weighted shots to help them in their training, he thought. Voila! Orval came up with a hollow-core shot which he patented and sold to schools across the country, before ultimately selling his design and molds to On Track.

Not content to limit himself to only assisting young athletes from the sidelines, Orval pursued athletic competition on his own terms, joining the Corona Del Mar Senior Track Club in 1969. As in everything he did, Orval became quite involved, achieving outstanding results. In 1995, in his last senior track outings at the age of 76, Orval took first place in the Nationals held in Lansing, Mich., and a second in the World Games at Buffalo, N.Y. He looked forward to his eightieth year, when he intended to pull off a repeat performance.