The Journal: News of the Churches of God

Stan Bass, longtime elder, dies

By Ellis Stewart

BIG SANDY, Texas--Clarence Stanley Bass, 70, a retired instructor in English at Ambassador University here and former regional director for the Worldwide Church of God in the Caribbean, died Aug. 2 after a long battle with cancer.

Mr. Bass affiliated with the Radio Church of God in the 1950s after hearing the church's radio broadcast while serving in the U.S. Air Force, where he played wind instruments in an Air Force band. He was baptized in 1954.

Because of his refusal to work on the Sabbath, he asked for and received an honorable early discharge from the military.

Mr. Bass was born in 1928 in Ennis, Texas, and grew up in Waxahachie, Texas. He received a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from Paul Quinn University, Waco, Texas, and a master's in English from the University of Texas at Houston. More recently he earned a bachelor's degree from Ambassador University in Big Sandy, after having also attended the California campus of AC in 1963-64. (Ambassador closed in 1997.)

In the early years of his ministry in the Radio and Worldwide Church of God, Mr. Bass served as an elder and pastor in Chicago, Ill., and Brooklyn, N.Y., and at church headquarters in Pasadena. In 1966 Mr. Bass's first wife, the former Lois Neal, died. He married Millicent Kerr of Lucea, Jamaica, in 1967.

Shortly thereafter the church sent Stan and Millie Bass to Barbados, where he served in the Caribbean ministry four and one-half years.

The Basses lived in Miami, Fla., for a short time, then San Juan, Puerto Rico, where they founded a WCG congregation and lived 16 years. While in Puerto Rico the WCG named Mr. Bass regional director for the Caribbean. He also served, from Puerto Rico, English-speaking brethren in Aruba, Bermuda, Colombia, Belize, Santo Domingo, Guyana and French Guiana and other countries in Central and South America. In 1990 the Basses moved to Big Sandy, where he taught at Ambassador until his retirement in 1994. Besides his wife, he is survived by a sister, Willie Pearl Harrell of Oakland, Calif.

Mrs. Bass receives mail at 300 N. Lexington, Big Sandy, Texas 75755.

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