By Elissa Ely
Sometimes, one accomplished, involved person is actually two; the sum of their lives together exceeds traditional math. This sum was so with Sue and Henry Bass.
Sue has been a Town Meeting member since 1998 and cofounded the Belmont Citizens Forum in 1999, diving into local politics and policies after moving to town with Henry four years earlier. In their 57 years of marriage, they did a tremendous amount of diving together.
Sue Bass. Photo: Meg Muckenhoupt
She was not a gregarious child. She was a reader: Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys mysteries, and most of all, any book that featured a horse. She grew up near a barrier beach on the New Jersey shore and still remembers the monumental East Coast hurricanes of the 1950s. Riding her bike to the ocean “in my major roaming years,” she once saw a Victorian mansion that had been uprooted by storm forces and carried hundreds of feet out to sea. Over the next few days, she watched it disintegrate from the bottom up.
There are many memories from childhood, of course, including time in what she calls her “Mid-Victorian girls boarding school.” Young ladies there were taught the art of pouring tea correctly, and (maybe in response) Sue joined a group pushing for advanced math classes.
The major roaming years continued afterward. She dropped out of Radcliffe—twice–and purchased a $99 Greyhound bus ticket, good for 99 days. A Greyhound (sadly, not a horse) took her first to Key West and then to New Orleans, where she lived in a hotel room without a stovetop but with a radiator hot enough to heat a can of soup. Eventually, driven by economics, she wound up in New York, working for a publisher. “I was a girl,” she says, “they needed typing, and I could do 19 words a minute.”
She had already met Henry in Cambridge. He was introduced to her as someone who threw the best parties in town. He cooked marvelously, he thought deeply, and he pursued her actively. At one point, when they were both living in New York—she in a ”‘residence hall for young ladies,” he in a less restrictive apartment a few blocks away—she was forced to cancel a date. Her roommate had come down with something infectious, and Sue had it, too. “We were disgusting,” she remembers. “We hadn’t bathed, and we were living on ginger ale.” Henry brought over dinner for both of them: elegantly stuffed pork chops. When Sue felt well enough to reciprocate, she cooked what she knew: tuna noodle casserole. “I later learned that if there was anything he hated, it was things made out of cans, like tuna and cream of mushroom soup.”
Ultimate commitment took time. The pivotal turn came when Henry sent a postcard from North Carolina, where he was visiting family. “Greetings,” it said, “from the magnolia-versity.” “I read that postcard,” she recalls, “and my little heart flipped.” They married in 1966. She was 22, Henry a decade older. In their Belmont house, hung to the inch with meaningful art and travel photography, there is one wedding photo. This was not because of any newlywed reluctance but because the three friends who promised to take photographs had celebrated too heartily.
Henry was an economist by profession and a trained anti-Vietnam war advocate by passion. He had been raised in the South and was astutely aware that most protests were held on coasts, not elsewhere in the country. That’s when they rented a U-Haul and moved to Atlanta, where he wrote proposals for pacifist sponsorship (“Guess who typed them?”), organized monthly demonstrations (“we basically had to show people how you picket”), and counseled conscientious objectors. Sue demonstrated with him and worked in advertising, “paying the bills so some food could come into the house.”
Living in Atlanta filled nearly four years. What next? “You don’t get many chances in life to go anywhere you want,” she says. They mulled Colorado, New Mexico, or California but finally decided to return to the Boston cultural world they loved. In Jamaica Plain, Henry wrote on non-violence and began making educational films, mostly about labor history and relations. Sue began a career in journalism (“I was typing 40 words a minute, now”). She started in the Statehouse News Service, informing private clients about relevant bills that had been filed, advanced to AP work, began an investigative news syndicate, and ended as an editor at The Lowell Sun. Along the way, there were more moves: Lowell, Chelmsford, and finally—lucky town—Belmont.
Propelled by McLean Hospital’s intention in 1995 to sell off-campus land for commercial development, “I turned in mid-life from a chronicler to an advocate,” Sue says. This led to years of successful litigation, and also to the formation of the Belmont Citizens Forum, whose mission remains increasing transparency in local government and protecting Belmont’s natural resources and small-town atmosphere. Reader, you already know about the in-depth articles on public hearings, zoning proposals, historical buildings, and environmental issues. Now and then, there are profiles, too.
Meanwhile, she and Henry traveled the world together, hiking, seeking, roaming, and reading. Their house groaned with bookshelves. He cooked his marvelous meals, and they hosted marvelous parties.
In 2008, Henry announced that he would make no more films. “He knew his mind was failing,” Sue wrote in a piece for her 60th college reunion. Yet it took almost a decade to properly diagnose his form of dementia and longer to realize that, though surgical treatment was possible, this was the rare case that failed to respond. They continued to travel (“What’re you going to do, sit in the house?” she asks), attend concerts, watch ball games, and listen to every kind of music at home. Sue made sure of it. It’s what one person does for another when they have created such an entwined and vibrant life together. The customary vows about sickness and health are easy enough to say under a bower when no one imagines, in that moment, that they will become necessary to enact. Then, rarely and awfully, they become necessary . . . . and some rise to it. Many don’t, and Sue did. In her caretaking, she rose for years. “We were very lucky in one another,” she says. Henry died at home in March 2023.
Sue continues to travel by herself: Greenland, Iceland, England, and maybe Mackinaw Island in the fall. On what would have been Henry’s 89th birthday, she bought six tickets for a Renee Fleming concert he would have loved in Symphony Hall. The concert was canceled, so her guests adjourned to a French restaurant instead. On Henry’s 90th birthday, she commissioned a musical piece in his honor. Without him, she still throws parties and cooks with sophistication. For her next event, she is planning to make his scalloped potatoes.
Farewell to Sue Bass from the Belmont Citizens Forum
A quarter century ago, the Belmont Citizens Forum was founded in Sue Bass’s dining room. Sue was determined to raise awareness about how the town’s planning and zoning matters could directly impact the quality of life for Belmont’s citizens. She was president of the organization and served on the board of directors, with her last stop serving on the Newsletter Committee that plans and oversees the publication that you are reading now.
Sue brought deep knowledge of town government along with her investigative skills honed as a newspaper reporter to her work with BCF. However, her unparalleled skill at recruiting volunteers to help realize BCF’s mission stands out as her superpower. Sue’s ability to gather a veritable army of experts of all stripes to help move BCF’s work forward remains unparallelled. These volunteers have truly been the lifeblood of the organization.
The Newsletter Committee will miss her incisive insights as well as her eagle eye in spotting that missing Oxford comma.
A word about the Newsletter’s beginnings: Sharon Vanderslice, one of Sue’s early recruits, suggested that an organization like BCF could benefit from a newsletter. Sue suggested that Sharon start such a publication—which Sharon proceeded to do, with Sue in the “godmother” role. Sharon was this publication’s founder and sole editor, publisher, designer, production manager, and on and on. Now, two editors and a Newsletter Committee carry on this work.
–Evanthia Malliris and Sharon Vanderslice
Elissa Ely is a community psychiatrist and a Belmont resident.
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