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- In The Care Of John M. Taylor Funeral Home
Ella Paton Bassett
October 15, 1933 ? June 2, 2023
Ella Paton Bassett, age 89, of Annapolis, Maryland passed away on Friday, June 2, 2023.
The Capital Gazette, 21 June 2023
Ella P. Bassett
Ella Bassett, a resident of Ginger Cove in Annapolis, passed away peacefully at home on June 2nd. She was born Ella Margreta Paton on October 15, 1933 in Melrose, Massachusetts to Andrew Harris Paton and Margreta May (Sherwood) Paton. After growing up in the northern suburbs of Boston, she became one of the first women to attend MIT. After graduating in 1955 with a business degree, she married Richard Gardner and they moved to the Detroit area. She was one of the only women to graduate with an MBA from the University of Michigan in 1959 and was the first woman to be accepted into the Ford Motor Company's graduate training program. In the early 1960s, she played a key role in the development of the Jupiter Missile program at Chrysler and developed a computer decision making tool for auto dealers with a room-sized IBM mainframe computer. They moved to Long Island, where she had her two children before the family moved to northern Virginia in 1968. She earned her doctorate at George Washington University in the early 1980s while teaching computer and decision sciences at George Mason University. By the late 1980s, she worked as a systems engineer at MITRE until retirement. In 1999, she married Ormon "Sam" Bassett and they retired to Annapolis after "merging" their two sailboats into one that they sailed on the Chesapeake Bay and the Intra-Coastal Waterway. Sam passed away in 2015. Ella was one of the smartest people in any room and was always recruited to participate in committees and clubs where her organizational and fiscal skills shined through. Ella taught her children to be smart with money, to persevere, to be cautious consumers, and be ethical in every way, in part by being ruthless at Monopoly! She always made new people in a group feel welcome and was an outstanding conversationalist. She enjoyed a pre-dinner gin martini with her friends and the occasional Manhattan. She is survived by her children Andrea (Matt) Cro and Paul (Michelle) Gardner; three grandchildren Megan, Matthew, and Ben; two stepdaughters Deborah Bassett and Elizabeth King; and several nieces and nephews. She was pre-deceased by her parents; her two husbands; her two half-brothers Andrew and Philip Paton; and her stepdaughter Susan Bassett. The family would like to thank the caring staff at Ginger Cove, Anne Arundel Medical Center, and Gilchrist Luminis Health Gilchrist Lifecare Institute Hospice Care Program. Donations in her memory can be made to Ginger Cove Foundation's Endowment for Employee Scholarships.
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