George Herbert Bell was born in California in 1927. Around 1930, his family moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon, where his father worked in a lumber mill throughout the Depression. Bell enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1945, just after graduating from high school, and he served in the Pacific Theater during World War II. After his discharge in 1948, he studied English at Southern Oregon College. He continued his education at the University of California Los Angeles, where he earned a master’s degree. He met Trubee Wetterau while at Southern Oregon College, and they were married in 1949. They later had one child and divorced in 1960. Bell was a member of the faculty at Southern Oregon College for many years, then a political reporter for the Medford Mail Tribune. In 1963, he and Sarah Ellen Groves were married; that same year, he joined the staff at the Oregonian newspaper in Portland. He left in 1965 to become assistant to the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House. He then joined KGW-TV as editor and later anchor for the daily noon news show. In 1970, he and Sarah divorced, and in 1971, he and Frances "Frankie" Hargis were married. In 1972, when Clay Myers was appointed secretary of state by Governor Tom McCall, Myers hired Bell as his deputy secretary of state, a position Bell held until 1979. He then served as assistant director of the Oregon Department of Transportation under Governor Vic Atiyeh until 1987. Governor Neil Goldschmidt later appointed him to the Board of Trustees of the Oregon State Library. He continued to be active in many civic organizations until his death in 2015.