Sybil Bunn once told former Arkansas first lady Hillary Clinton to improve her fashion sense.
"One thing that people remembered about Sybil: She was a sharp-dressing woman," friend Kennie Hicks said. "Everything matched. In fact, she'd be dressed if she came outside of her door. It didn't matter where she was going."
Bunn rubbed elbows with the Clintons when she led the United Negro College Fund committee at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Bunn's alma mater. And she made sure to draw in some stars, like attorney Johnnie Cochran and singer/actor Lou Rawls, for featured telethons to raise money for minority-group students to succeed.
"Sybil is the person you can't say no to," said Hicks, who met Bunn through the committee. They were not on good terms at first. Hicks wouldn't repeat what was said but noted, "She is a person that believes in speaking what she feels."
Bunn was known for her lifelong passion for education and impeccable fashion sense, and for her sharp tongue, friends and family said. Despite that, everyone loved her, Hicks said.
At 88, she died Tuesday of heart failure, said her son, Sherman Steward.
Born in 1928 in Scott, Bunn was the first of nine children and took on a sort of maternal role. Her mother was a social worker, and both parents were heavily involved in church-related activities, helping anyone who needed it, Bunn's daughter Gwendolyn Kountz said.
"She led by their example," Kountz said, adding that her mother and best friend had a vibrant and caring spirit. "She was beautiful. She was intelligent. She was strong-minded. She was determined to do it the right way. Very elegant, very poised, had a lot of style and a lot of class."
Bunn earned her bachelor's degree in education at Philander Smith, and a master's degree in guidance and counseling from the University of Central Arkansas. She also earned a certification in special education, an area that she homed in on toward the end of her 30-plus-year teaching career.
Bunn, who was black, got her start in her early 20s, teaching in Waldron during the Jim Crow era. She had stints in Hazen, Earle and back in Scott, and she was around when schools in the state started integrating.
"She would tell me about things that other teachers would say, but she wasn't the kind of person who would allow you to say it and get away it," Steward said. "She would address it. She was very direct."
Also, whatever she had to work with, she always made the best of it.
Bunn eventually settled in Little Rock, working at Central High School and culminating her career at Parkview High School.
No one knows what led Bunn to the teaching profession, but her friends and family said she found it her calling. She fought for her schoolchildren, educated them, even took some of them to her home.
Kountz threw an 85th birthday bash for her mother at the former 1620 Savoy restaurant, and it didn't take long for word of it to get around to Bunn's former students. Steward gave a short introduction, and the former students lined up ready to tell stories of how Bunn had affected their lives.
During her teaching years, Bunn found different ways of giving back to the community, mostly promoting scholarships for high school students, Kountz said.
"She believed in education and believed in what it could do -- especially for young black people," Kountz said. "I'm just so proud of her. While she's going to be missed, there's still a lot of people that revel in what she shared with them."
Metro on 01/19/2017