Bud Sellers

I opened my January American Philatelist yesterday and saw that F.Burton Sellers was one of the winners of the American Philatelic Society’s Hall of Fame award this year. Unlike baseball’s Hall of Fame which is for the living and dead alike, The APS’s Hall of Fame is only for deceased philatelists who have had a measurable impact on our hobby. Bud died in 2010 at the age of 92 and for most of the years that he was active in the hobby I knew him well. In 1975 when the Interphil organizing committee was having last minute troubles with the preparations for the International show that was planned for Philadelphia the next year, Bud was asked to step in and reorganize the management structure of the organization, which he did in his usual seamless manner. We served on the APS Board of  Directors together twice. He was an unusual combination of effective manager and team player. He combined impeccable philatelic skills with great managerial acumen. Being an effective officer of a philatelic organization requires both achievements-sort of like a college president in the old days who needed to be a prominent scholar before they could ascend to a job that required first rate business ability. The skill sets are quite different and are not always found in the same person. Bud combined them and added a folksy charm that made him everyone’s best friend even when he was advocating positions that were quite different from ones that you thought were best for philately. Bud made a comment once that defined his philosophy and is a good lesson for dealing with obstreperous people. At an APS Board meeting we were discussing what our response should be to an unfair and brutal attack on the APS that had appeared in print. Most of us were for filing a strong and equally incendiary response. But Bud advocated not attacking the person who had slandered us. His reason-“Never get in a pissing contest with a skunk”.