Chemist developed Band-Aid adhesive
In late March, John Sellers and his children gathered on the floor of the Kentucky Senate to hear a resolution passed in honor of his late father.
Matthew B. Sellers was a celebrated aviation pioneer, who had recorded the first flight in his quadroplane, in Grahn, Ky., at about the same time as the Wright brothers famous flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.
His scientific journals, photographs and propellers can be found in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, while a yearlong exhibit on his work, continues at the Aviation Museum of Kentucky.
On what would have been his 139th birthday, and 100 years after his first powered flight, Kentucky state leaders declared March 29 Matthew B. Sellers Day and called him "one of the greatest contributors to the aeronautical industry in America."
"My dad had tears in his eyes to finally see his father get the recognition he was due," says Barbara Sellers of Libertyville.
A little over three months later, Mr. Sellers passed away. The former Barrington resident, most recently of Lake Barrington Shores, died on Sunday, at the age of 87.
When Mr. Sellers was only 11, his own father died, but he already had instilled in his two sons a legacy of invention and scientific discovery.
Mr. Sellers went on to earn a master's degree in chemistry from Fordham University, before serving in the South Pacific with the Navy Reserves during World War II.
Serving with the Navy was a natural choice, family members add, after Matthew Sellers was appointed by President Warren G. Harding to the Naval Consulting Board, with Thomas Edison.
In the commercial world, Mr. Sellers worked for Johnson & Johnson as a chemist, where he invented the adhesive backing for the Band-Aid.
After working for several other plastic manufacturing companies, Mr. Sellers and his wife, Gail, moved their family to a five-acre farm in North Barrington, located adjacent to Biltmore Country Club.
They settled in the historic Honey Hill Farm, which offered the family a rural setting on which to raise their horses, though its historic 19th century barn blew down in the tornadoes of 1967.
During these years, Mr. Sellers operated his own company, North American Packaging in Schaumburg, where he invented a series of plastic fittings, including the pouring spout for the bag and boxed wine industry.
In 1976, Mr. Sellers sold his company and retired, moving his family to California, where they stayed for 28 years. In 2004 when Gail Sellers passed away, Mr. Sellers moved back to the Barrington area to be closer to his children.
Recently, Mr. Sellers has helped his daughter, Barbara, obtain artifacts and more information to compile a biography on his father, to be published by the Smithsonian in partnership with HarperCollins Publishers.
Besides his daughter, Mr. Sellers is survived by his sons, John Clark Sellers Jr. and his wife, Helen of El Cerrito, Calif., and John Blakemore Sellers of Schaumburg; daughters, Robin and her husband, Bob Benson of Mount Pulaski, Ill., Annabel Cole of Evanston; as well as six grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren.
A memorial service will take place at 11 a.m. Aug. 9 at the Lake Barrington Shores Recreation Center in Lake Barrington, before Mr. Sellers and his wife are interred with full military honors on Oct. 1 at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.