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- Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 Jun 2004
Mary F. Bassett
Ice cream matriarch, 94
Mary Ferguson Bassett, 94, of Gwynedd, matriarch of a Philadelphia ice cream dynasty, died Saturday of complications from an aneurysm at Foulkeways, a retirement community in Gwynedd.
In 1930, she married Lewis L. Bassett Jr., whose grandfather had begun making ice cream in 1861 at his Salem, N.J., farmhouse. Her daughter, Ann, said her mother briefly worked for Bassetts Ice Cream at the Reading Terminal Market. She then became a chief consultant and taster for new flavors her husband concocted. When he died in 1986, after 46 years as president, daughter Ann Bassett became president. The company is now run by Ann's son, Michael Strange.
Over the years, as Bassetts expanded to new markets, Mrs. Bassett continued to monitor the quality of the ice cream and in March gave approval for new packaging.
A native of West Philadelphia, Mrs. Bassett graduated from Friends Select School in Philadelphia, For 70 years she lived in Gwynedd, where she enjoyed tending her flower garden.
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by a son, David, and five grandchildren. She was predeceased by two other sons, Lewis and Todd. A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. June 19 at Gwynedd Friends Meeting House, Route 202 and Sumneytown Pike, Gwynedd.
Memorial donations may be made to the American Friends Service Committee, c/o Development, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia 19102.
Obituaries, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 1986
Lewis Lafayette Bassett, 80,
Leader of the family ice cream company
Lewis Lafayette Bassett, 80, the man who gave Bassett's ice cream pizazz, died Monday at his home in Gwynedd Valley.
President of L.D. Bassett Inc. from 1940 until 1974, he put the family owned company on a course that has brought it international recognition.
Once available only to Philadelphians in a handful of traditional flavors, Bassett's is now served at the White House and at diplomatic functions in the nation's capital. It is available throughout the country in a varied range of flavors.
The Bassett ice cream dynasty was founded in 1861 when Lewis Bassett's grandfather, Lewis Dubois Bassett, a Quaker schoolteacher, set up a mule-powered ice cream churn in the back yard of his Salem, N.J., farmhouse. Appropriately, his first flavor was tomato.
As years passed and younger Bassetts took over, the churn was replaced by two 40-gallon freezers and the business moved to the basement of the Reading Terminal. The ice cream made downstairs was served upstairs at Bassett's ice cream shop in the Reading Terminal Market.
Lewis Bassett, something of a Renaissance man in his interests, began making changes soon after he took over operation of the company. He was determined to pursue new ways to make Bassett's, the ice cream that bills itself as the "old-fashioned, extravagant ice cream".
Studying at Pennsylvania State University, he decided to reformulate the recipes developed by his father and grandfather and to do it with dramatic flair.
The result was a richer ice cream, one with more butterfat than most, one that is whipped more than most.
And the flavors. He plunged into it, experimenting with exotic fruits wherever and whenever he found them. He used kiwi fruit, guavas, mangoes, and papayas. In a return to the past, he also produced yellow tomato ice cream.
Then there was the Krushchev experiment. When the Soviet premier came to the United States in 1960 for a visit marked by his shoe-pounding speech to the United Nations, the company was asked if it was possible to make borscht-flavored ice cream.
Twelve hours later, a sample was on its way to Washington, arriving there before the premier. History does not recount whether Krushchev tasted the borscht ice cream, much less whether he liked it.
In the end, Mr. Bassett took the freezers out of the Terminal basement and contracted with the Potts Ice Cream Co. at 20th and North Street in the Fairmount section for production of his 30 different flavors. At the same time, L.D. Bassett Inc., spun off its Reading Market retail outlet - known in the trade as a "dip shop" - but saw to it that it was operated by a Bassett.
The shop is now owned and operated by Roger Bassett, his grandson. It is not part of the ice cream-making company.
Well after Mr. Bassett decided that his company was on its way toward becoming what he wanted, he stepped down in favor of his daughter, Ann.
The new president of the company quickly found that she couldn't relax in the job. The former president was looking over her shoulder.
"My father was not an easy man to work for," she said. "He must have fired me 15 times and I quit the other 15 times. But we were very close."
"He made Philadelphia the ice cream capital of the world," Ann said with unabashed enthusiasm.
He lived with a zest that he passed aloong to his children and his company, his daughter said, and carried his enthusiasm for life and living to the end. His interest in the organ was an example.
A former orchestra leader, he played the piano, drums, saxophone and trumpet. In his later years, he decided the organ was his instrument. He took lessons once a week. He played with the great volume that joy produces, Ann noted, and filled the house with reverberations.
He continued his work on the organ until age and infirmities put an end to it.
Mr. Bassett was a graduate of the Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro, Va., and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Bassett was also a pilot, a sailor, a house and boat designer, a photographer, a model train enthusiast, a collector of tropical fish - his wife put an end to that when 28 aquariums threatened to overwhelm all - and a fan of film.
Once, his unbounded enthusams got him into trouble, Ann recalled. It was the movies.
It seems that he felt no room in the house was quite suitable for showing films. So, in the absence of his wife, he tore out the wall between living room and dining room, she said.
His wife returned and, shortly, the wall was restored.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Mary Ferguson Bassett; a son, David; five grandchildren, and a sister.
Services will be held at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Episcopal Church of the Messiah,, Gwynedd. Burial wll be in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd.
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Bassett Family Association Database
1909 - 2004 (94 years)