| Notes |
The Daily Record, Dunn, North Carolina, Wednesday, 21 June 2023
Virginia Bass Tart, 100
Virginia Bass Tart passed away peacefully on Tuesday, June 20, 2023, at UNC Hospice in Pittsboro with her family by her side. Virginia was 100 years old.
Virginia was born Oct. 26, 1922, to Chester and Mary Page Bass of Cumberland County. Throughout her life, she worked hard and excelled at anything that she attempted ? from sports to cooking and all kinds of needlework to artwork. The only girl who tried out to be a school bus driver, she scored higher than all the boys by executing a turn by the rules. The pinnacle of her high school experience was when she caught the ball for the final out during a championship softball game, resulting in a win over rival Coats High and the reward of riding home on the fender of her coach's car. Virginia graduated from Central High School in 1939 and remained close to her high school classmates throughout her life.
After attending Kings Business School in Raleigh, she moved to Newport News, Virginia, and worked in the naval shipyards during World War II. In 1945, she married Hugh Willie Tart of Dunn and became a lifelong partner, working behind the scenes to support him, being active in their businesses and rearing their three children. She was a wonderful cook, who showed her love and caring for both her family and community through sharing food. Hugh Willie once said that he had worn out a set of tires delivering pound cakes to residents of Dunn.
Virginia was an active member at Stoney Run Church where she taught a children's Sunday School class for many years. She continued to support that class and even crocheted red toboggans for each child the last Christmas of her life.
She passionately cared for her family and raised them to be conscientious and kind citizens. She loved her extended family as well as Hugh Willie's. Many family members celebrated her 100th birthday with a joyful gathering at her home in October 2022.
Heartbroken after her youngest daughter, Anne, was killed coming home from East Carolina University one weekend in 1971, Virginia began taking lessons in china painting. Within a few years, she became an accomplished porcelain artist, studying under teachers from all over the United States. Many homes are still blessed with the ornate pieces of china that she produced. She would say that she did not sell her work, as many of her colleagues did, because nobody could ever pay her enough money for the effort that she put into it. In the 1980s to 1990s, she taught china painting at Johnston Community College and thoroughly enjoyed it. Virginia continued to enjoy painting china until she was 100 years old.
She also created beautiful needlework, sewing, smocking and crocheting. Her crocheted works ranged from delicate snowflake tree ornaments to toboggans, scarves, sweaters and afghans. At age 98, she created dozens of toboggans and scarves for children in need. In the last few months of her life, while under hospice care, she crocheted an afghan for her grandson. She was also known to occasionally play the guitar. In short, her hands were never idle.
Virginia Bass Tart was the daughter of the late Chester and Mary Page Bass. Her husband, Hugh Willie Tart, her daughter Anne Tart, her grandson Derrick Johnson, her brother Columbus "Red" Bass, and her sister, Grace Knowles, predeceased her. She is survived by her daughters, Gayle Tart Davis and husband Richard of Durham and Ruth Dare Tart Staples of Pembroke Pines, Florida; her grandchildren, Evan Davis and wife Erica of Chapel Hill, and Stuart Davis of Brooklyn, New York; and her great-grandchildren, Erika and Victoria Johnson of Pembroke Pines, Florida.
A celebration of Virginia's life will be held at Skinner and Smith Funeral Home at 905 Erwin Road in Dunn on Friday, June 23, 2023, at 2 p.m. Family will receive guests there one hour prior to the service. A burial will follow at Devotional Gardens in Dunn.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks donations be made to Stoney Run Church, Dunn; Yates Baptist Church, Durham; or Durham Urban Ministries.
|
Bassett Family Association Database
1922 - 2023 (100 years)