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Agnes Reed Bassett (93) passed away peacefully in the Bulkley Lodge on September 8, 2010. Agnes was born October 1, 1917 on her grandparents’ farm in Northville, South Dakota to Chester and Ines Reed. Following graduation from high school she attended Miltonvale Wesleyan College for three years, receiving a teaching certificate. After teaching in a one room Nebraska school, she applied for a job in Jackson, Wyoming at the base of the Teton Mountains south of Yellowstone Park. There she met Grover J. Bassett, son of a local ranching family and was married in 1943.

Her only child Monty Bassett was born in 1944 in Jackson where the family lived until 1949 when they moved to the Shoshone Indian Reservation. Those years became the basis of her book, “Innocent Out West.” Agnes returned to school and received her B.A. in music education from Colorado State Teacher’s College. Soon after graduation, the family moved to Casper, Wyoming where Agnes remained teaching until retirement in 1978, when she moved to Seattle, Washington. Later she would live in New Westminister, and finally, in Smithers, B.C. where her son and his family still reside.

Besides being an accomplished pianist, writer and textile artist, Agnes acted in numerous community-theater productions and studied acting at UCLA in the summer. Agnes was also an avid art historian, and took art history courses at the University of Arizona in Tuscon, working towards a Master’s Degree in Art History.

Agnes is survived by a sister Eletheir Elam, residing in Fredrick, Maryland and a brother, Scott Reed in Chicago, Illinois. She has three grandchildren, Angeline Nicole Bassett, Samara Reed Bassett and Marley Carter Bassett, and two step-grandchildren Tara Williams Earnshaw and Lexane Roseau. She has one great grand-daughter, Audrey Carter Waters.

Memorial Services will be held in the Anglican Church of St. James, October 8, 2:00 p.m., reception to follow.



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