OBITUARY: PR leader, activist, ‘centrifugal force’ Robert Kenneth 'Bob' Sells

Bob Sells
Bob Sells

Two thousand poor children in St. Louis were turned away because Santa Claus ran out of Christmas presents.

Bob Sells was stunned when he read that in a newspaper in 1967.

"We went down to the Sterling store and bought a bunch of toys and mailed them to the post office of this housing project in St. Louis," said Stacy Sells, his daughter.

That's just the way her father was.

"He taught us to get off the couch and go do something to make the world a better place," she said.

Robert Kenneth "Bob" Sells of Little Rock died Monday of respiratory failure. He was 84.

"He just became really sick in the last two weeks," Stacy Sells said. "He had some respiratory issues, combined with heart problems."

Bob Sells was a veteran public relations professional and community activist who lived in Arkansas for 56 years and was well-known most recently as a volunteer at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock.

"It was an honor to know Bob Sells," former President Bill Clinton said. "He was good at everything he set his mind to, so we're all fortunate that he cared most about serving others. I am grateful that he and Georgia were founding volunteers at the Clinton Center, just one of his legion of causes.

"I expect Saint Peter to give him the John Wesley Award for doing all the good he could. Hillary and I send our gratitude and thanks to his wonderful family."

He was well-known across the city for his volunteerism and larger-than-life personality.

"He walked into a room, and he was like centrifugal force," said Skip Rutherford, dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock. "He was energy. He was fun and outspoken, a great storyteller. He just cut a wide path."

Born Oct. 29, 1932, in Kansas City, Mo., Bob Sells served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War and earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia.

His college roommate and best friend from those days sent an email to the Sells' children, Stacy and Mike, on Monday.

"Your dad was a favorite person of mine as you know, going back more years than either of us were keen on recalling," wrote journalist and author Jim Lehrer. "We stayed in good touch through it all."

Sells worked for a few years in Texas before moving to Little Rock in 1961 with his wife, Georgia, and infant daughter Stacy.

Bob Sells had accepted a public relations job that year with the former Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. in Little Rock, where he worked for about 30 years.

It was at the telephone company where Rutherford met Sells, who was his first boss.

"It took no time to realize what an exceptional talent he was," Rutherford said. "It also didn't take very long to realize that he wasn't your typical corporate type. He was free-spirited, irreverent and fun. And I wanted to grow up and be just like him. ... He took me under his wing and kept me there for a lifetime. He had an enormous influence on me."

Upon retirement in 1990, Bob Sells opened his own public relations and marketing agency (now the Sells Agency), wrote a weekly column for the Arkansas Gazette, and taught public relations classes at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

Sells also was active in the Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church.

Metro on 06/28/2017

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