The Village of New Berlin, New York, lost one of its most distinctive citizens when Phebe Bassett, a village resident since June 1969 and a former resident of Garrison, died at UHS Binghamton General Hospital on Sunday, Sept. 29 of complications following minor surgery on the previous Friday, a day after her 82nd birthday.
Her death was preceded by that of her father, George Pomeroy Bassett III (1988), her mother, Virginia Shoemaker Bassett (1995) and her brother, James Morris Shoemaker Bassett (2002).
She is survived by her brother, George Pomeroy Bassett IV, her sister-in-law, Nancy Hamill Wilson, and her niece, Eliza Barr Bassett-Wilson, all of Ewing, New Jersey; and her first cousins Richard David Townsend, of the Philippines and Fairfield, Iowa; Mary Cleland Townsend and her husband, Jonathan Perry Pitt, their older son, Jonathan Wendell Townsend-Pitt, and his partner, Sheri Barrett, all of Garrison, and their younger son, Thomas Britton Townsend-Pitt, his wife, Brooke Allison Chadwick, and their son, Frazier Holland Chadwick, of Bloomingburg, New York; and Nancy Bassett Smith, of Lexington, Massachusetts, and her three daughters and their families, and Susan Pomeroy Bassett, of Flagstaff, Arizona.
Born at New York Hospital (now NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital), Phebe grew up in Garrison (except for the family’s three years in Derwood, Maryland [1950–52] and attended Garrison Union Free School and later The Gunston School, in Centreville, Maryland. Though she was significantly nearsighted in her early years and also had to wear an eye patch over her “good” eye to cure strabismus (misalignment) in her weak eye, she was an early reader and became a notably fast and decidedly voracious one.
She loved gothic and historical romances, westerns, fantasies and fantasy-oriented science fiction, Harlequin romances, political thrillers, and mysteries, including British “tea cozies.” Perhaps even more remarkable than her insatiable appetite for books was her memory, which retained not only minute details of the plots of hundreds of novels but also the names of the major, minor and even bit-part characters of television shows of the 1950s through the 1970s — and the names of the actors who played those roles. She had a great fondness for figurines and other knickknacks and enjoyed making potholders out of cotton loops on a loom and sewing holders for pens, eyeglasses, and needles out of felt and colored threads.
A familiar figure on her daily walks to the post office, pharmacy, bank, library, convenience store, pizzeria, senior center (as well as the grocery store, second-hand shop, and Victorian-themed restaurant before those businesses closed), Phebe had friends, friendly acquaintances and wonderful helpers in all those places.
She was seen less frequently after her move in November 2016 from the family home, at 35 South Main St., where she’d lived with her parents and brother Jim, all of whom had died there, to an apartment at 2 Terrace Heights, from which she could not walk into the village far below but from which she was fortunate enough to have friends willing to drive her where she needed to go.
After a fall in January of this year she spent a few days recovering at UHS Chenango Memorial Hospital, in Norwich, and then made what turned out to be a permanent move to Chase Memorial Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center, which she chose over two facilities in Norwich because it was in New Berlin, only a stone’s throw from her apartment and within reach of her village and her friends.
A necessarily modest supporter of the New Berlin Library and the Unadilla Valley Railway Society and Museum, Phebe would have liked to sponsor other organizations of the village where so many people had been extraordinarily kind to her and for whom she had so much affection in return. All will be welcome to attend a memorial gathering at Chase (1 Terrace Heights) at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 15.
Phebe will be missed by many, as doubtless will her signature admonitions whenever she was bidding farewell to friends — pieces of advice we can remember with a smile as we in turn bid her a final, fond farewell: “Don’t dream anything I wouldn’t dream. And Don’t Trust the Weather!”
