Ethel Sell, Founder of Recreation Association, Woman of the Year
The following is the introduction of Ethel Sell when she was honored in 1975 by the Shawnee Mission Soroptimist Club as a part of Soroptimist International Women’s Year.
“Ethel began her service to others very young in life. At three years of age she baked a cake to ‘help her mother.’ As a young girl growing up in South Dakota, she was constantly doing things for others.
Upon graduating from high school, in the early depression years, she was unable to go to college to study social service. But her indomitable spirit and ingenuity got her a job as juvenile officer for Potawatomie County in Iowa.
After marriage (in 1932 to Reuben Sell) she was busy raising a family. However, she was not too busy for community service. When her oldest son was five, she, with other area women convinced the Hickory Grove School Board they should have a kindergarten, one of the first in Johnson County.
Her work with her family saw her helping the school, P.T.A., school lunch programs, and acting as a Cub Scout den mother and later a Camp Fire Girl leader. While serving in this capacity, she always tried to instill in them a desire to do better and be better.
She was a leader in her church with youth work. For seven years, she took over 100 teenagers to a rustic camp near Eureka Springs, Arkansas on a retreat, never once having a discipline problem.
When they moved to Goodman Road (in 1951) there was a swimming pool on the grounds. It immediately became a mecca for youth. Ethel literally taught hundreds to swim. Here, too, there was cooperation, discipline and love.
When her son Curtis was in grade school, Ethel single-handedly went to the School Board and got permission to have a Teen Town once a week for the 7th and 8th graders. It was a great success and was soon copied in other schools.
Ethel and John Keach organized the Johnson County Recreation Association. From this the Park Board was developed. Ethel was always one to do the unnoticed, unheralded things that make organizations tick. She was on the exploratory committee to determine the need for a Girls Home in Johnson County.
She doesn’t do things for glory. Her reward is a Christmas card or a plant from a teenage Sunday School class to their teacher. Ethel’s life is one of service. One that blesses and enriches all who know her.”
Ethel Sell’s recreation program at Hickory Grove school offered a summer full of supervised and constructive activities such as crafts, bowling, softball, and square dancing. While Johnson County was segregated in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ethel Sell, nonetheless, personally invited South Park school children, the only black school in the area, to participate in the Recreations Association.
--ALBUM vol. 11, no. 1 (winter 1998)