He attended Harper School District #42 until the eighth grade, completing high school education in Brookfield, where he rented a room during the week and walked back to the farm on weekends to help his father. He was a member of the high school track and football team playing "end" on a team which lost only once in four years. Orlen graduated from BHS in 1932, distinguishing himself in oratory and debate as well as in math and science.
Orlen continued his education in 1935, enrolling at Missouri Valley College, Marshall, where he studied chemistry and physics and was on the football team and captain of the track team. He was MCAU conference champion in the high and low hurdles. While at Missouri Valley, he was president of Alpha Delta Kappa fraternity, president of an athletic fraternity (The Vikings), president of the chemistry club and Student Senate president his senior year. In 1939 he received his B.A. after lettering all four years in football and track.
Orlen served in the US Navy during WW II and fought in the Pacific Theater as gunnery officer on the U.S.S. Indiana. He married Navy Wave Hulda Penland in 1945 and were parents of Mary and Kay. They returned to the family farm in 1946, helping his parents transition from a horse driven agricultural operation into one using gasoline powered tractors.
O.H. taught school in Green City School system prior to the war and began teaching higher mathematics in the Brookfield School System in 1966. He acquired a Masters in Administrative Education from Northeast Missouri State Teachers College, Kirksville. For the next 18 years, O.H. taught algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus to R-III students. In his classroom he also taught personal responsibility, ethics, honor and respect. He addressed each student as Mister or Miss and would arrive early to school or stay late after class for any student needing assistance.
His interest in athletics never waned; he was a presence every year as the discus director for the Brookfield Relays and liked to watch the home football games from the North stadium gates.
During the years he taught at BHS he also managed the family farm, kept 150 head of cattle, planted crops and put up hay in the summers. O.H. continued to hunt and many of his students knew that he could be encouraged to take small breaks from math class for the exchange of hunting stories.
O.H. was a man of few words; a strong man in spirit, intellect and body, and revered by many students throughout the years. Not one to attract attention to himself, he preferred to lead by example. O.H. Williams pasted away on December 7, 1988.