The Bass Collection

Found Photo Project #9

By Eilene Lyon

Similar to the Welsh-Adler File, I recently picked up a collection of photos from the local antique mart that had belonged to a single person. I did leave behind a few unidentifiable snapshots, but bought the remainder.

Unlike the David R. Young photo that mysteriously turned up locally, I have a clear provenance for the Bass Collection. Though the people pictured—and many of the photos themselves—originated in Lamar County, Alabama, the last person to own this collection died here in Durango.

Though at first some of the images did not seem to belong in the collection, with a bit of research I tied them all to the original owner, Elvin Brant “Johnnie” Bass. All were related in some way with the exception of one of Johnnie’s classmates from the University of New Mexico, John Dietzman. His portrait went to a relative a couple weeks ago. The rest of the Bass Collection was mailed to Alabama. They will be accessioned by the Lamar County Historical Society via a Bass relative.

There will be a number of interesting stories to come out of this group of found photos, but I should begin with Johnnie.

Elvin B. Bass was born July 22, 1907 in Vernon, Lamar County, Alabama.¹ His father was Edward N. Bass (1879–1952) and his mother was Ada E. Box (1889–1908). You can see that his mother, Ada, died not long after he was born. Ada and many of her close relatives died in a wave of typhoid fever in 1908 and 1909. That will be a separate tale.

Edward Bass remarried in 1910 to Emma J. Byrd.² Emma was step-mother to little Johnnie and had no children of her own. Johnnie called her Mom, but he knew his biological mother was Ada. The collection has only one photo of Ada as a young girl, with her Box family.

Johnnie’s collection has many photos of the extended Byrd family, which included some Byrd cousins in the Brock family. That’s a lot of B surnames! Bass, Box, Brock, and Byrd. A small group of pictures are from the Pennington family (connected to the Boxes), and a few other surnames that popped up were: Collins, Engh, Enix, and McCullough.

In the early 1920s, the Edward Bass family lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico.³ By 1930, they had moved to Roswell, where Edward owned a service station.⁴ They spent time in Phoenix before returning to New Mexico by 1940. They settled in Albuquerque, which is where Johnnie had graduated from the university in 1928.⁵ The Bass family liked to vacation in La Plata County, Colorado, at a resort area called Vallecito.

Johnnie married Ruth Virginia Zendt in Phoenix, Arizona, on August 14, 1935.⁶ Their daughter, Dorothy Jane “Dottie” Bass, came along in January 1943.⁷ That was right about the time Johnnie began his WWII service, enlisting in Albuquerque on December 30, 1942.⁸ He was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas.⁹ The couple had no other children.

Johnnie’s career after college began in Roswell, where he worked as a cashier for a phone company. In 1940, in Albuquerque, he operated a service station. By 1950, he had a career in real estate.¹⁰

His daughter, Dottie Bass, married once and soon divorced, retaining her maiden name for life.¹¹ She had a career working in the federal government at the Farmers Home Administration and in Housing and Urban Development. She retired and moved to Bayfield, La Plata County, Colorado, in 2001 and died at Mercy Hospice in Durango in 2018.¹² And thus the Bass Collection undoubtedly wound up in her estate sale here.

Feature image: 1928 graduation portrait of Elvin B. “Johnnie” Bass.