Mary Grace Bassett descends from #1B John Bassett of Connecticut as follows:
John Bassett and wife Margery
Robert Bassett and wife Mary
Robert Bassett (b. 1640) and wife Elizabeth Riggs
Samuel Bassett (b. 1692) and wife Deborah Bennett
Benjamin Bassett (b. 1740) and wife Mary Hinman
John Bassett (b. 1858) and wife Nancy Atwater Lee
William Elliot Bassett (b. 1829) and wife Mary Dowd
John Down Bassett (b. 1858) and wife Julia M. Selden
Joseph Eliot Bassett (b. 1888) and wife Jane Olive Jones
Mary Grace Bassett
The Washington Post, June 16, 2020
Grace Bassett, reporter who chronicled urban legislation in Congress, dies at 93
By Adam Bernstein
Grace Bassett, a journalist who covered District affairs on Capitol Hill for The Washington Post and the old Washington Star, most notably chronicling passage of the constitutional amendment giving D.C. residents a voice in presidential elections, died June 8 at a nursing home in Annandale. She was 93.
The cause was complications from dementia, said her friend and agent for power of attorney, Robin Renner.
Ms. Bassett worked at The Post from 1953 to 1957 and won a Washington Newspaper Guild Award for her coverage of the District’s response to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education outlawing racial segregation in public schools.
At the Star, where she spent about a decade, her beat was urban legislation in Congress. The American Political Science Association honored her for excellence in political reporting for the two years she spent following the campaign for the 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ratified in 1961, it authorized D.C. residents to choose electors in presidential elections.
Ms. Bassett was a frequent guest on public affairs TV shows and, after studying politics, sociology and economics at Columbia University on a Russell Sage Foundation grant, became a consultant in the late 1960s on urban issues for clients such as Newsweek and RCA. In 1968, she was an assistant campaign manager in the unsuccessful candidacy of Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Starting in 1970, she wrote a column for the Hearst media empire’s King Features Syndicate. Six years later, she left journalism for a position as assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ms. Bassett obtained a law degree at Georgetown University in 1979, but macular degeneration abbreviated her legal practice.
Mary Grace Bassett was born in Spokane, Wash., on Aug. 17, 1926, and grew up in Okanogan, Wash., where her mother taught high school and her father was a banker. She was a 1947 political science graduate of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., and received a master’s degree the next year from Columbia University’s journalism school.
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After two years as a reporter for the Spokesman-Review of Spokane, she did postgraduate study at the University of Paris and University of Frankfurt before joining The Post.
She never married and had no immediate survivors. In 2001, she wrote “A Glimpse of Grace,” a book about her aunt Grace Jones, a noted interior designer in the Pacific Northwest.
Ms. Bassett once won a national senior indoor singles tennis championship and made a flurry of news for her prowess on skiing trails.
In 1974, she was in the reporting pool that accompanied President Gerald Ford to Vail, Colo., where on Christmas Day she and another newswoman encountered the president on the slopes.
According to a United Press International account, he was informed that the women wanted to ski with him. “It depends on whether they are pretty,” he said with a grin, before turning to a Secret Service agent for approval. The agent shook his head no.
“You don’t have to obey him,” the reporters responded.
Ms. Bassett continued on her way and later assessed the day’s skiing in her pool report: “The sky was clear blue . . . the snow, off the tracks, was like a coat of marshmallow frosting — really with diamond sparkles in it.”
San Antonio Light, Texas, Monday, January 5, 1970
Miss Bassett Joins Hearst Staff
The Light’s Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON – Grace Bassett, a prize-winning Washington newspaperwoman and consultant, today joined the staff of the Hearst newspapers’ Washington Bureau, where she will specialize in articles on urban problems.
From 1952 to 1956, Miss Bassett was a staff write on The Washington Post and for the 10 succeeding years, she covered congress for The Washington Star with emphasis on urban legislation.
In 1960, she was cited by the American Political Science Association for “excellence in political reporting” as a result of her coverage of the campaign to give Washington residents the right to vote for president and vice-president.
On the Star, she worked for five months on a reporting team that produced a Pulitzer Prize winning series on metropolitan problems. In 1955, she won the first and grand prizes of The Washington newspaper Guild for a school integration series appearing in The Post.
A frequent guest on television panels discussing urban issues, Miss Bassett also conducted her own weekly half-hour interview show, “In Person,” on Washington radio station WGMS in 1964 and 1965.
During the 1966-67 academic year, Miss Bassett studied politics, sociology and economics at Columbia University on a Russell Sage Foundation Grant. Following that, she became a political and urban consultant with such clients as the Urban Institute, RCA, Newsweek, The Urban Coalition and the Sage Foundation.
In 1968, Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy hired Miss Bassett as an assistant campaign manager in the presidential primaries. In this capacity, she wrote position papers, worked with adult volunteers, supervised the Washington headquarters and scheduled his appearances in New England.
Miss Bassett is a native of Spokane, Wash., and a descendant of transplanted New Englanders. Both her grandfathers were Yale men, one of them, John D. Bassett, a Republican, served as a Washington state senator. She took her bachelor of arts degree in political science at Whitman College, a master’s in journalism at Columbia and did post-degree study, mainly in languages, at the University of Paris and The University of Frankfort.