Last October I wrote about receiving a letter from Claudette Bass of Chino Hills, an occasional correspondent, concerning the death of her beloved soul mate Squeaks, a 12-year-old mutt whose companionship had meant so much to her during her bouts with terminal cancer.
She was also thanking us for the two tickets to the L.A. County fair she won for her reply to my conundrum about the Balfour Declaration, a British foreign policy statement regarding the formation of Israel after the First World War. (There were two declarations, which she correctly mentioned.)
Mrs. Bass couldn’t get to the fair, because her illness kept her pretty well confined to her hedge-shrouded home on Lugo Avenue, where she lived with a number of cats and dogs, including Squeaks. It turned out, though, that she had been to the Irish Fair at the Fairplex after winning two tickets from us two years before.
She wrote me (longhand on decorative paper, because she had no computer or email) that Squeaks had helped keep her alive. “His rich, happy life with me is my only comfort as I mourn him and must face more chemo and treatment without him.”
I had to tell Mrs. Bass that we didn’t run animal obituaries, because we’d be flooded with them. I didn’t mention that she could buy advertising space for it, because I knew she had little money, and was just hanging in there.
Claudette attributed her winning answer to her great interest in world history, and her travels, including the Mideast. She was a prolific writer and poet, but had little success in being published for pay, and had boxes of rejects to show for it.
Her letters to the Champion included a response about the controversy over Ramadan song at Hidden Trails Elementary…
She was also thanking us for the two tickets to the L.A. County fair she won for her reply to my conundrum about the Balfour Declaration, a British foreign policy statement regarding the formation of Israel after the First World War. (There were two declarations, which she correctly mentioned.)
Mrs. Bass couldn’t get to the fair, because her illness kept her pretty well confined to her hedge-shrouded home on Lugo Avenue, where she lived with a number of cats and dogs, including Squeaks. It turned out, though, that she had been to the Irish Fair at the Fairplex after winning two tickets from us two years before.
She wrote me (longhand on decorative paper, because she had no computer or email) that Squeaks had helped keep her alive. “His rich, happy life with me is my only comfort as I mourn him and must face more chemo and treatment without him.”
I had to tell Mrs. Bass that we didn’t run animal obituaries, because we’d be flooded with them. I didn’t mention that she could buy advertising space for it, because I knew she had little money, and was just hanging in there.
Claudette attributed her winning answer to her great interest in world history, and her travels, including the Mideast. She was a prolific writer and poet, but had little success in being published for pay, and had boxes of rejects to show for it.
Her letters to the Champion included a response about the controversy over Ramadan song at Hidden Trails Elementary…
"As a Jew I have not experienced any downplaying of Christmas. It propels our economy and is a focus as soon as Halloween passes. I simply go about my life and accept this is the culture. And the fuss at a school board meeting over the language in The Handmaiden’s Tale… Suddenly a segment of parents were upset about the approved listings which were “contrary to our community’s moral and ethical standards.”
She compared this to the “intense necking and kissing” she saw at Ayala High when she went to pick up her son, the too-casual clothing worn by students, and the F-word language she heard from parents caught in traffic outside the school. To say nothing of what young people see in movies and on TV.
At other times she complained about rate increases for trash and sewers, and bemoaned the junk thrown along her street from passing cars, the broken glass which she found around her house “which has no sidewalks,” and the way the city cut the trees.
One time two years ago she sent me a packet of letters on a variety of subjects, and invited me to choose one for publication.
She praised the style of the Champion’s obituaries. “Each person seems specific and real, and although I never knew them…each mention is like a short story.” She said she had been an obituary writer at the age of 24 for a newspaper, but was let go because the editor wanted only the basic facts of birth, death and services, while she felt that family information should be included.
Despite her illness, “I want to be as active and as part of life as possible,” she wrote in March, 2006. She said that despite her physical condition at that time she did spring cleaning, weeding and mowed the lawn. She had come to the upper Los Serranos area from Alhambra about 11 years ago, but felt shunned by the neighbors. She and her husband had separated but he kept her health insurance going. Both he and their son Ethan now live in Texas.
Her house now is full of memories, writings published and not published, and until recently a large inventory of clothes the petite lady loved to wear. Her pets now number four cats and one dog
Last week I got a telegram from Texas to let me know that Claudette Bass had died two weeks before, at her home on March 12, an event apparently unrecorded in the community.
Her surviving pets and her house are being cared for by a homeless woman she took in to help her in her declining health.
World traveler, adventurist and author, who became a cancer-stricken recluse, she was 57.
I think she would be pleased that our readers would have more than the bare facts of her passing.
Copyright 2008 Champion Newspapers - Published April 5, 2008
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