With Doris Bass you knew who she was because she always laid it out, and spoke exactly how she felt about any situation. This pattern of being carried Doris from her earliest days until Monday evening of this week when she left the world in exactly the way she had wanted to.
Unwilling to live in pain, unwilling to be restricted from the activities that were her life’s passions, our Doris said goodbye to the people whom she loved and died on her terms, in her own beloved Bondville home.
Doris began her life in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1928, the second child of Sarah and Nathan Lubin. Doris’s brother Hillard was born about four years before. That made the Lubin family of Chester complete.
There were one of the only Jewish families there, which was difficult for Doris.
Early in life, when Doris was 12, she lost her father to cancer. After this tragic loss for the family, Doris’s mother Sarah became a restaurateur. She soon remarried, to a lovely man named Joe Sharpe, who became Doris’s beloved stepfather.
You might think that Doris came to her activism later in life if you’ve known her from her Vermont years: you would be mistaken.
It was already during her teenage years that Doris was quite involved in the local Communist Party and social activism. One law in Pennsylvania struck her as particularly unfair: it allowed an African-American to have a seat at a restaurant only if he or she was accompanied by a Caucasian. Otherwise they would be denied a seat.
So Doris let it be known throughout the community that she was available to be the Caucasian that would take any African American to be seated at any restaurant.
After growing up in Chester Doris left for college, to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. What a huge difference from Chester. Up in the gorges of Cornell she found other Jewish people! A revelation!
There she met many lifelong friends, including Audrey Bloch, Barbara Howland, and many others. It was only last week, while a parade of people were visiting Doris, that Audrey and Doris reunited for what the last time. They hugged, they talked, they sang the Cornell Song Far Above Cayuga’s Waters:
Far above Cayuga’s waters,
With its waves of blue,
Stands our noble alma mater,
Glorious to view.
Without missing a beat, Doris and Audrey launched into the spoof version penned by folks at University of Pennsylvania, Cornell’s archrival in sports:
High above Cayuga's waters
There's an awful smell;
Some will say it's Lake Cayuga,
Others say Cornell.
It was a beautiful moment for two dear old friends. In one moment there was a beautiful tableaux, Doris holding court in her chair in her living room, while Audrey, having difficulty with her mobility, finally reached the position next to Doris as Doris, all 85 pounds of her, reached around to help steady her for a final photograph. There was not a dry eye to be had.
At Cornell, Doris met her future husband, Donald Bass of Brooklyn, New York. The day after Doris was graduated from Cornell in 1950 she married Donald in a ceremony back in Chester at her family's restaurant. By age 25 they had three children: Robin, born 1950, Steven in 1954; and Jonathan in 1956.
It was also in 1950 that the family house purchased a home on Lake Oscawana. It was at that house that the family spent many, many years.
You might not know this but while it looked to be happy on the outside, these years in the so-called “perfect” decade of the 1950s were personally taxing on Doris on many levels. On the outside she was playing the part, living in Queens, raising her family, trying to make her marriage successful. On the inside, though, she felt trapped by her in-laws and her life situation overall.
In the early 1960s, in response to Doris’s reflection on her life since marriage and children, she made an important decision that would determine the future contours of her life. She chose to go back to school to get a Masters' in Library Sciences at St. John's in Queens. Of course the decision was easy for Doris as she recounted to Working Women magazine in 1986: “It could just as easily have been secretarial school. I chose library science only because they would accept me immediately without a transcript.”
With her masters in hand, she went to work as a librarian in the Brooklyn Public Library as coordinator of young adult services. This was a natural fit for Doris, given how much we all know she loves books, reading and literature. She advocated this her entire life.
In 1974 her husband Donald died suddenly. Another loss, another change in her life’s situation.
Doris, now 46, made a major move: She high tailed it out of Queens to Manhattan where she really knew she belonged. She found an apartment on East 63rd Street and lived there until her move to Vermont full-time in the 1990s.
Those work years were happy and productive for Doris on so many levels. Once in Manhattan, the publishers came knocking. They were looking for a trained librarian to expand into the world of libraries. They wanted her skill set. Known for her commitment and unwillingness to take “no” for an answer, Doris was recruited in 1971 Random House to be director of library promotions. It was the perfect complement to her brains, her abilities, and what she loved.
In 1978 she moved to Bantam Books as director of school and library marketing and sales, where her career grew to include Doubleday, Dell, adult titles, supermarkets and airports. She then joined Scholastic in 1991 as director of marketing in the trade book group, where she worked until retirement.
Doris made an enormous impact on the people with whom she worked. Since Doris’s left us, Robin and Steven have been receiving emails from Doris’s former colleagues in New York who sing Doris’s praises:
Dear Robin and Steven,
Doris was my boss during the 1990s at the School and Library Department at Bantam Doubleday Dell, and she was an amazing leader. She had pulled an extraordinary group of people together on her team, and she got us to work hard, work smart, and have a fun time promoting and selling the books. She was a great teacher to me; she earned my admiration and my respect. I learned so much from her and will miss her very much indeed.
A wonderful side of Doris.
There was another side, one that many of us also know. This one we can charitably call polite irreverence.
Robin shares a story of a bracelet that was found in her mother’s bedroom. She did not know where it came from until she received this email:
“Dear Robin and Steve,
I was saddened to hear about your mother's passing. She was one of a kind! Elegant, feisty, acerbic, and she knew how to laugh.
I have a favorite Doris story. I design jewelry, and among my pieces was a sterling silver bracelet. Most people ordered them with children's names. I made a few pieces that were irreverent and funny. One of them had the letters WTF. Doris bought it immediately!!
She was a special lady.”
I was saddened to hear about your mother's passing. She was one of a kind! Elegant, feisty, acerbic, and she knew how to laugh.
I have a favorite Doris story. I design jewelry, and among my pieces was a sterling silver bracelet. Most people ordered them with children's names. I made a few pieces that were irreverent and funny. One of them had the letters WTF. Doris bought it immediately!!
She was a special lady.”
All of us marveled at Doris’s athleticism, how she pushed her body, especially on the ski slopes. The family started skiing together back in the bad old days of skiing, in the 1960s. Then the equipment was horrible: the days of the lace-up boots, and skis that were sky high. In order to get your money's worth you needed to be at the slope at starting time and ski the whole day. Getting to and from the ski areas was not a pleasant experience, either. Still, the family loved to ski. Doris took to skiing...Doris and Donald traveled through Europe to ski.
Ultimately she made skiing one of her main activities so she relocated to Vermont. Upon Doris’s retirement from the publishing world she had to make a decision when she couldn't afford New York and Winhall. She would try living in Vermont to find out if she liked it. She said she'd give it a year, and she moved up here full time and fell in love.
She had a friend named Amber who started coming up with her quite often, and a great deal of Doris’s initial time was spent easing into Vermont because of Amber’s presence. Once Amber found herself in a relationship she stopped coming as much, but by then, Doris was firmly rooting herself in the community.
She made friends here, at Israel Congregation of Manchester, she started working on the mountain, she had met Fred Richter, and Norma Rosenblatt. She found her way to Trailblazers, a group of people over 50 who enjoy skiing and have other social functions. At one time she was an officer and on the board of the Trailblazers, contributing her time, effort, and good thinking on the mountain. She loved the Stratton Mountain community so much that she even worked there for many years. Her Vermont community increased exponentially over time.
Doris loved her community here, as we loved her.
Doris had other good experiences with male companions.
First was Al Solomon with whom Doris bonded over their shared dislike of Donald’s father. They, too, were together for many years: traveling and skiing together. They shared a house in Jamaica, VT, skied on Stratton, and were together for at least ten years before he, too, died.
She then met Fred Richter, a jeweler. Because of Fred Doris met another strong male presence in her life, Al Feldan. Doris and Al Feldan also had a nice relationship. When Fred was dying, and Doris was simply wonderful to him, Fred left Al a sizeable collection of jewelry to donate to charities in our area. Fred died in July 2006. At some point after Fred died, and the collection of jewels was growing low, Al Feldan said to Doris to go out and meet another jeweler. She replied, in typical Doris fashion: “Sure, Al. I will get a sexy new dress and take care of it right AWAY.”
Tragedy again struck Doris’s life in 2006 as her youngest son, Jonathan, died of cancer. He was first diagnosed while living in Paris in his late 20s. He moved back to New York with his then wife MaiLoan. For 17 years, Jonathan lived cancer free. Once it reappeared he lived another six years with second wife, Inez. When he died, in November 2006, it was devastating to Doris. He was Doris's baby.
Despite those tragedies Doris continued to press forward with her life.
As a lifelong traveler, Doris’s constantly curious mind meant that she loved being exposed to all the myriad of cultures that exist in the world. One famous picture of Doris shows her on her Africa trip in a Dashiki. On another trip to Scotland she said she was going to make sure to sample each pub with her six year old grandson with her!
Robin and her mother loved to travel together. . .including a special trip taken last summer, just before Doris’s health began its decline. This trip to Alaska with Robin was a bucket list trip. Not only did they make the trip, Doris hiked three miles in Alaska, and went kayaking. Robin expresses that it was such a special memory and how much Doris loved that trip. Robin treasures they were able to do that together.
As Doris' middle child, Steven was adored by his mother. She depended on him and knew that his special talents helped her navigate her life; always looked forward to his visits here and the time that he spent with her.
Doris also loved Steven's wife, Nancy, who became very close, and spent much quality time this past years here and in Maine when they drove back and forth to visit Doris' brother, Hilly.
Doris adored her grandchildren. . .Diana, Paul, Deborah, Donald, and Brett as her God-grandson. Each of them remembers stories about their grandmother; one as late as last week when Paul and his grandmother were having some scotch on her bed, and she quipped, "What are you doing getting an old lady drunk?"
Also late last week, when Diana crawled into bed with her grandmother, just to hold her as they both fell asleep. A moment.
Robin speaks of her special ed students from Brooklyn who grew-up knowing Doris, calling her "Grandmaw Bass." They learned to snowboard with the CHILL program. For five years, Doris would invite them up for the US Open Weekend stay with her for a long weekend of snowboarding. For many of these kids, it was their first time out of the mean streets of Brooklyn; for some, it was a life altering experience. That's our Doris.
Then there were Doris’s four-legged friends: Sasha, Joey and Samantha. Her two living dogs, Joey and Samantha, have found new homes. Samantha is now living with Steve and Nancy at their home.
Fortunately Doris received a great gift when she turned 85: a birthday party, put on at the home of Drs. Marisa and Allan Eisemann, with her great pals Al Feldan and Norma Rosenblatt. It was at this party, surrounded by family and friends that Doris was feted, each of us telling her what a tremendous person she is. Doris loved that party. She was the belle of the ball, in good health. It as a Doris-fest where all of the people who populated her life could be there and fete her and love her while she was healthy and in life. She quipped that it was better than attending your own funeral!
Marisa has been a close friend and confidante to Doris for many years. They shared a wonderful relationship.
Al Feldan calls Doris his "mountain wife" because they were always carousing around the mountain and throughout town.
And Norma always phoned Doris or Doris phoned her every morning for eight years to go over their days.
Other close friends include Jeannie and Lee Nemlich and Marilyn Rice who drove Doris to Bennington for her final hospitalization.
Being part of Israel Congregation was a huge part of Doris’s identity. She served on our board, and chaired our library and programming committees. She was a force of nature in ensuring that the library was organized as a true lending library, not a morgue for your old Uncle Max’s books. Her programming committee found ways to bring the community into the ICM building with many activities, including the winter film festival. Her publishing skills were legendary as she reviewed our newsletter and weekly publications. Her loss leaves a large hole in our congregation.
In recognition of Doris’s immense contribution to our synagogue community, the Board of Directors of ICM voted to rename our library the Doris Bass Library. I was able to tell Doris about this while she was still alive. This pleased her greatly.
To know Doris was to understand how hard she pushed her body. Two hips, two knees, a hip revision: she was bionic. She would always bounce back from any procedure until late last summer.
Over the last six months of her life, it became clear to Doris and many around her that her quality of life was deteriorating; it was under these circumstances that Doris made the decision to go home, be in home-based hospice, and begin the process of dying in earnest.
Many people captured a sentiment expressed by Wendy Bloch, Audrey’s daughter, who said that Doris shows us how to live and Doris was showing us how to die.
In Doris's last days, she enjoyed a parade of people who she loved and they loved her.
Doris, of course, was sitting up in bed one day and quipped, "What if it doesn't work?" We knew that Doris would never be happy as an invalid, that she expressed her desire to have her life end if she could no longer live the life she wanted.
Doris's leaving of us is what she wanted. She is at peace. For us, though, there is a large hole in our lives that Doris once filled. It will take many days, weeks, months, and years to begin to adapt our lives to a world without our Doris.
