[2] Sheets did not seek reelection because of the time required away from his employment as public relations director of his alma mater, the Christian-affiliated John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.
[3][4] After having received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible and English in 1953, Sheets immediately joined the John Brown University staff as manager of the campus radio station.
While attending John Brown University, he had met his future wife, the former Martha Hamlin, a native of Disney in Mayes County in northeastern Oklahoma.
[3] After his military duties, Sheets returned to John Brown University 1958 as director of public relations and student recruitment, a position that he maintained until 1969.
[7] In the 1967 legislative session, Sheets introduced a revised death penalty bill, but Rockefeller opposed capital punishment, a position at odds with most Arkansans in both parties.
Sheets said that he was contacted at the time by J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who presented "talking points", a term not yet coined, that the death penalty is a deterrent to murder because it causes some miscreants to think twice about the taking of life if they know that their own existence would be jeopardized.
Upon leaving John Brown University in 1969, Sheets took the position of full-time executive director of the Siloam Springs Chamber of Commerce, but the next year he was back in politics as the Republican nominee against the Democratic Secretary of State, Kelly Bryant of Hope in Hempstead County in south Arkansas, also known as the hometown of later Governors Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee.
Then U.S. Representative John Paul Hammerschmidt of Arkansas's 3rd congressional district, a Harrison Republican businessman and Medal of Honor winner first elected in 1966, along with Rockefeller and Maurice L. Britt at the top of the ticket, had informed Sheets that he believed, incorrectly as it turned out, that U.S.
[12] Had that scenario developed, Hammerschmidt, known in particular for his prompt and effective constituent service,[13] planned to run for the Senate and would have endorsed Sheets as his preferred House successor.
"[3] In 1982, Sheets left Siloam Springs to become executive director of the Kiwanis International Foundation, based in Indianapolis, a position that he retained until he retired in 1998.