ORANGE COUNTY : Buell Becomes Comarco’s Chairman of the Board

Glenn Buell, Jr., president and chief executive of Comarco Inc., has been given the additional duties of chairman of the board for the Anaheim defense contractor. Buell succeeds former chairman Richard Riordan, a Los Angeles attorney, who will remain a director.

Riordan was named chairman in Aug., 1984, following the death of co-founder Howard Sommer with the understanding that it would be an interim position until Buell was ready to assume the job, company officials said. Buell, a former Air Force pilot and executive for several defense contractors, has been president and chief executive of Comarco since 1980.

The Comarco board also named Gerald Griffin, the former head of the Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston, to an unfilled board position. Griffin, who left the Johnson Space Flight Center just weeks before the shuttle Challenger explosion, currently is the chairman, president and chief executive of the Houston Chamber of Commerce.

In addition, the company’s board selected retired Admiral Wes McDonald, the former commander in chief of the Navy’s Atlantic forces, to fill the next director’s vacancy. The company has said that James C. Fletcher, recently nominated by President Reagan to head the National Space and Aeronautics Administration, will resign from the board following his confirmation for the NASA spot by the U.S. Senate.

Company officials said Fletcher’s resignation from the board is expected shortly.