Deceased January 5, 2014
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In Memory
I have been reading obituaries in the alumni magazine for nearly 40 years. I never imagined that I would ever write one, least of all for my roommate and best friend, Clive Sell, who died on Jan. 5. He is survived by Miriam Latker Sell, his wife of 27 years, and his three children: Ben, David and Madeline.
Clive came to Amherst from Nashville, where both his parents were doctors (or, as Clive put it, “a paradox”). He had four great years at Amherst, rowing for the crew team (“what ancient Romans used for torture”) and becoming a toga-wearing member of TD. After Amherst he spent a year in graduate studies at Cambridge University, where he made his father proud by rowing in the Henley Regatta. He attended Vanderbilt Medical School and did further postgraduate work at Duke. He settled in Phoenix, where he practiced retinal surgery and started Associated Retina Consultants.
Clive was a big bear of a man, who was invariably friendly, cheerful and helpful to all he met. He skied, sailed, golfed and traveled. He achieved far too many things in his life to list here, but there is one small achievement we laughed about for years to follow:
We saw a note in The Student that there was a contest for the Rogers Prize in Extemporaneous Debating. Neither of us had ever debated before, and we competed against those who had. Using a combination of deceit and trickery (e.g., “As we know from Dr. Quackenbush’s research”—when there was no Dr. Quackenbush), we shocked ourselves by winning. We promptly renamed the contest to be the Rogers Prize in Forensic Excellence, and went to the Drake to spend most of our winnings on Jack Daniel’s.
Farewell, Clive. Nobody will ever have a better friend than you. God bless you now and always.
Peter Kranzler ’76