A legend. A force. A pillar.
That's how those who knew Geraldine "Gerry" Sell describe the Minneapolis community activist and neighborhood advocate, who died on June 12. She was 88.
"My mother was very much the champion of the underdog," said her daughter, Paula Sell.
She was an election judge passionate about voting rights, an environmentalist "before that was even a thing" and a civil rights advocate who pushed to integrate Minneapolis schools, Paula Sell said.
"She loved her neighborhood, and she loved getting out there and meeting people," she added.
Born Geraldine Liss in Milwaukee, Sell was valedictorian of her class at Mercy High School. Talented with numbers — and later able to rattle off statistics to support countless advocacy efforts — she graduated from Marquette University with a major in English and mathematics and taught at elementary and high schools in both Michigan and Wisconsin.
In 1958, she married mathematician George Sell. His career later brought them to Minneapolis, where he became a professor at the University of Minnesota and they raised six children.
In 1965, Sell joined with neighbors to found what's now called the Field Regina Northrop Neighborhood Group — an organization she served with passion for decades, as a community representative, education chair, secretary, newsletter editor and eventually "historian for the neighborhood."
