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Fred Poe, Founder of Poe Travel, Dies

2 min read

Fred Poe, founder of Poe Travel of Little Rock, Arkansas’ best-known travel agency, died Friday in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was 81.

Poe died of apparently natural causes while traveling, friends and family said.

Poe, a descendant of pioneer settlers in Saline County, founded Poe Travel in 1961 after serving apprenticeships with agencies in Montana and Washington.

In September 1975, Poe Travel was the first U.S. travel agency to arrange tourist travel to China after President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to the communist country and the beginning of normalization of the relationship between the two nations.

In 2007, the agency took a group of travelers to North Korea, a country that remains a rare destination for visitors.

In a 2007 article about the North Korea journey, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette interviewed Jeane Hamilton of Little Rock about her experience on the 1975 China excursion.

“With relations tense at that time between China and the United States, the group of 18 arrived in Shanghai to huge posters of Marxist military leader Mao Zedong everywhere,” the Democrat-Gazette article said. “The Americans were taken to factories, communes and the Great Wall, all with a ‘very rehearsed communist spiel on what they were doing for the people and how it was working,'” Hamilton told the paper.

The Americans drew the attention of thousands of curious Chinese, Hamilton said.

Poe Travel is now operated by Poe’s daughter, Ellison LeLaurin Poe of Little Rock, and Margaret Farrell Kemp.

Poe also was active in the civil rights struggle, according to his obituary, and participated in a sit-in at the Memphis airport restaurant, which led to its desegregation.

He was a member of the ACLU; a former president of the Little Rock SKAL club, composed of travel professionals; a lifetime member of the Country Club of Little Rock; a published travel writer; and an art collector.

In addition to daughter Ellison Poe, Poe’s survivors include his son Antoine “Tony” Poe of Little Rock and wife, Laine Rosen Poe, and one grandchild, Jane LeLaurin Madden. 

A celebration of Poe’s life will be held from 3:30-5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Capital Hotel in Little Rock. Arrangements are by Ruebel Funeral Home, RuebelFuneralHome.com.

Poe’s full obituary can be read online here.

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