Lorraine Bass, 99, retired teacher; son says crash at 21 led to language oddity

LORRAINE SMITH BASS, 99, a teacher, artist, pianist, and community activist in LaMott, Cheltenham Township, died Wednesday, Aug. 24, at a retirement home in Montgomery County, her family said.

Mrs. Bass was born on July 26, 1917, in Wayne, the first of two children of Joel C. Smith and Beulah Mosley Smith. She was predeceased by her brother, Joel C. Smith Jr.

Mrs. Bass graduated second in her high school class at age 16, said son Aaron Jr. She went on to Cheyney University, where she graduated first in her class, he said.

Bass said his mother made medical history before her children were born, when she was in a car accident in Richmond, Va., at age 21. She fractured her skull and was unconscious for a month.

"When she awoke, she was speaking fluent French," he said. His mother had taken French for three years while in high school but had not been fluent before the accident. He said the hospital brought in a translator to communicate with her. Officials also documented her sudden French fluency in medical reports, Bass said.

Her fluency in French lasted only a few weeks, her son said, and she returned to speaking English.

Mrs. Bass began a teaching career in Halifax County, N.C., but conditions in the South caused her to return to the Philadelphia area, where she taught in the city's public schools.

For 58 years, until his death in 2008, she was married to Aaron Bass Sr., an aeronautical engineer and a Tuskegee Airman, whom she met while he was on leave during World War II.

They were married in 1949 and had two sons, Aaron Jr. and Laurent.

Aaron Bass Jr. said his mother also was a talented artist, whose watercolor painting hung in her room at the Hill at Whitemarsh assisted-living community.

"She was very vibrant," he said. "She did all kinds of artwork."

She also sewed and crocheted, and at one time made her own clothing, her son said. "We used to have labels made in her name to go in the back of her clothes," Bass said.

Bass said his mother was an accomplished pianist who performed for Sunday schools at a number of churches over the years, most recently Trinity United Methodist Church in Germantown.

Although his mother was only 5 feet tall and he, his brother, and father were all about 6 feet tall, "we all listened to her," Bass said.

"She would have such wisdom," he said. "If you went to her asking her advice about a situation, she was able to analyze things and tell you how to handle it almost as if she had been in the room" when the conflict occurred.

He said Mrs. Bass also was a strong community activist who could change injustice.

"We used to live in the LaMott area of Elkins Park and after the township renovated the LaMott Community Center, they made it available to all these different sports clubs and organizations and everybody but the community," Bass said.

He said his mother organized with other parents and went to a township meeting to present her case "very calmly, very to the point, with no yelling and screaming."

"And within a matter of days, that week the community center was open to our community," said Bass, adding that he was a teenager at the time.

He said his mother also advocated for him at Cheltenham High School in the late 1960s when counselors imposed a business curriculum for him, rather than an academic schedule that would prepare him for college.

"They weren't trying to prepare the black students to go to college," he said. "My mother went to the school and said I would be taking a full academic schedule."

Aaron Bass Jr. went on to Lincoln University and, after graduating, received a full academic scholarship to Temple University, earning a master's degree in social psychology. He became a data analyst. His younger brother, Laurent, graduated from Temple University and earned a master's degree in education from Harvard University.

Funeral services for Mrs. Bass will be at 11 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 1, at First Presbyterian Church, 35 W. Chelten Ave., Philadelphia 19144,where friends may call at 10 a.m. Burial will be in Hillside Cemetery, Roslyn. Afterward, the family will host a repast in Longstreth Hall at the church.

Memorial contributions may be sent to the church at the address above.

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