AN AMERICAN PIONEER

The Estate of David I. Oreck New Orleans, Louisiana

Seemingly determined to take on the world from the very beginning, David I. Oreck, was once known as a small, red-headed boy with a propensity to get into fights with the bigger kids in his native Duluth, Minnesota. It would be his steadfastness and scrappiness that would ultimately cement Mr. Oreck’s legendary status as one of America’s most iconic entrepreneurs.

The founder of and spokesman for the Oreck Corporation, the renowned vacuum cleaner company, dropped out of his freshman year in college to join what was then the Army Air Corps. His experiences serving as a Boeing B-29 Superfortress navigator in the Pacific Ocean during World War II instilled in Mr. Oreck a deep sense of patriotism and pride, leading to his lifelong commitment to American-made products.

A lover of aviation, Mr. Oreck was an active pilot well into his 80s and built a significant collection of historically important aircraft, which included a Stinson Reliant SR 10J, a Waco WMF, an Aviat Husky Amphibian and an American Champion Decathlon, among others.

Yet, Mr. Oreck’s true passion was for storytelling and for capturing consumers’ minds, something for which he had a natural gift.

Following the war, Mr. Oreck joined General David Sarnoff in New York, honing his sales skills as a salesman for the then-exclusive distributor of RCA television and Whirlpool appliances. After 17 years, Mr. Oreck eventually took over as the CEO of the RCA distributorship for Louisiana and Mississippi, a role in which he created and led an array of distinct national marketing campaigns.

It was in 1963, when he was 40 years old, that Mr. Oreck cemented himself as a pioneer in the use of direct marketing when he founded Oreck Corporation, initially serving as the exclusive national distributor for Whirlpool-branded vacuum cleaners. His creative, strategic and compelling marketing strategies allowed direct mail and direct sales to be hugely successful.

But just as his direct marketing strategies defied the conventional approach of the time, Mr. Oreck also believed he could sell a radically different kind of vacuum cleaner. Steadfast in his belief that a quality vacuum cleaner could be both powerful and durable, yet lightweight, Mr. Oreck personally pitched his eight- pound Oreck vacuum on television commercials. By the time the Oreck Corporation was sold in 2003, the now iconic Oreck ▶

"I think in the final analysis, a measure of a man's worth in the relatively short life we have on this planet basically is what favorable impact you've had on others. When I think about it, in the Oreck Corp., we've had 1,400 employees, millions of people who use the product and swear by it, love it. I can't help but feel that makes me the proudest."

– David I. Oreck

vacuum had become the premier high-performance floor-care product – an estimated 10 million of which have been sold!

Staying true to his natural storytelling talents, Mr. Oreck became a featured lecturer at more than 40 leading universities around the country, offering his insights on entrepreneurship and branding. He was also soulfully committed to educating younger generations about the U.S.'s role in World War II.

While it was business interests that first led Mr. Oreck to New Orleans, he fell in love with the South, where he split his time between the Crescent City and Poplarville, Mississippi. He was a generous contributor to the New Orleans community, including to The Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, the Isidore

Newman School and the National World War II Museum. He was also actively involved in real estate and purchased and operated the Security Center in downtown New Orleans, where Oreck Corporation’s corporate headquarters were also once based.

At his expansive 600-acre farm in Poplarville, which includes a hangar, runway, main house, guest house and stables, Mr. Oreck relished walking, cruising one of his two HarleyDavidson motorcycles and flying one of his pristinely maintained aircraft.

Mr. Oreck, along with his son Bruce, was also an avid collector of natural history specimens. Mr. Oreck made significant contributions and donated important examples to mineralogical institutions such as the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Mr. Oreck passed away in February 2023 at the age of 99. He is survived by his wife, Jan, his sons, Thomas and Bruce, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

NOAG is honored to offer natural history specimens, fine art, aviation-inspired furniture and more from the succession of David I. Oreck.