George R. Bent II was born March 5, 1928, in Berea, Kentucky, to George Bent and Eleanor Hopkins Bent. His father was the Director of Customer Services with the Berea College crafts and who, for a short time in the early 1930s, was head of the Mountain Weaver Boys. He attended the Berea College affiliated Training School (1934 to 1940), the Foundation School (1941-1942), and graduated from high school in 1944.  His older sister, Eleanor McVey Bent, also attended Berea affiliated schools. After graduating from high school in Berea, but before enrolling at Oberlin College, he worked with the Quaker Relief Service in Europe, primarily in Hungary. The year that he spent with the Quaker team, 1947, was a life-changing experience for him, and the year that the Quakers received the Nobel Peace Prize for their relief work in Europe.

Bent graduated from Oberlin in 1952 and went on to earn a Master of Public Affairs degree at Princeton. Bent later joined the management team of the Pfaudler Company in New York, becoming president of the Pfaudler Division of Sybron Corporation. He and his family moved to Ohio in 1980, when he was named general manager of Nordson Corporation’s robotics division. In 1982 he became president of the Ceilcote Company, a unit of General Signal Corporation, the position from which he ultimately retired. George Bend died on September 17, 2013.