Baldwin County GaArchives History .....History of Baldwin County - Bass Biographies 1925
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 October 7, 2004, 12:24 am

p. 272-275

REV. CHAS L. BASS

    Among the citizens and the leaders of Baldwin County, Rev. Charles L. Bass
occupies a unique and distinct position. As a minister of the gospel, as a
lawyer, and as one of the chieftians of the fraternity of Freemasons, he
occupies a three-fold position that has not been obtained by any other citizen
of Georgia. In addition to his ministerial service, he has given his life to the
service of humanity in connection with his Masonic work. He is not only a Past
Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Georgia, but he is also at present director
of Masonic Welfare, a position created in 1923 for the purpose of the
development and uplift of the Masons of this State and their interests. As a
minister, and as a Freemason, he has received innumerable honors.

    Charles Larkin Bass was born in Midway, at the home of his Grand-father, Dr.
Thomas F. Green, July, 1869, his Father at one time being Assistant Physician at
the State Sanitarium. Mr. Bass spent his childhood and boyhood in old Midway,
and there received his early education, later attending schools of Atlanta, Ga.

    He become a successful lawyer and was a member of the Legislature. Shortly
afterward, there came to him the call to the ministry; and, realizing the claim
upon him of a widowed mother and several sisters, he delayed the answer to this
call for some time, but finally, feeling that God had appointed his field of
labor, he entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church South.

    His first appointment was Blue Ridge; then Kirkwood, and later Fairburn.

    The devotion of the people, of the charges that he served in, is almost
without parallel.

    Sometime later he was appointed Welfare Agent of the Southern Railway, the
only position of its kind, which he held for several years, severing his
connection to enter upon the philanthropic work of the Masonic order as Director
of Masonic Welfare.

A Little of Charles L. Bass's War Record

    In 1917, when the United States entered the World War, Charles L. Bass
offered his services to the Government as Chaplain and was accepted, but the
medical Dept. turned him down because he fell decidedly below weight. Later he
was appointed by Bishop Candler as Chaplain of the Wesley Memorial Hospital
Unit, but was again rejected because of under weight.

    Still later he went as a representative of the Young Men's Christian
Association, and was in active service until the end of the war. His was a most
varied and unusual service. He was first stationed at Camp Gordon in charge of
the Y. M. C. A. Administration building, where he served eight months. As in
every other phase of his life he very soon won the love and confidence of the
boys, who affectionately dubbed him "Uncle Charlie."

    After six weeks of intensive training in New York City, he sailed on the
Persic as chaplain of the ship, for over-sea service. On Friday, Sept. 6th, the
13th day of the voyage, the ship was torpedoed. The bombs struck the storage
room and, tho the ship was lost, no lives were lost. Mr. Bass was in charge of
the hospital and assisted the sick to get into the life boats, wrapping one man
in his own overcoat. As the life boats floated off leaving 150 officers and men
on board the sinking vessel, one soldier, standing by him, called to his
departing friends "I believe I'm in the safest place for I am with the Chaplain
and I know the Lord's with him." These men were rescued by an English destroyer
just as the Persic was going under, and landed at Plymouth; from there he went
on to London, and after a short delay, on to Paris. He was first sent to Aix Le
Bain, in the French Alps, to work in a rest and recreation camp for the boys who
had been to the front, but was soon sent to more dangerous work at the front.

    He was at the front at the time of the Armistice, and started into Germany
with the 3rd Div., but was called back to Paris—so he stood on the bank and saw
the boys pass over. On his return to Paris, he served as chaplain to the
railroad boys, going over France wherever they were stationed.

    Wherever he served, he took love and comfort to the wounded and distressed,
and no Y. man was more loved.

    Besides his experience in being torpedoed, Mr. Bass was in an air raid at
one time, and was gassed. Among his minor escapes was that the end of the room
in which he was sleeping, was blown off. After a service of seven months
overseas, Mr. Bass was honorably discharged as the Surgeons declared he would
lose his voice permanently, from the effects of the gas, if he remained in
France. He returned by the southern route, thru the Mediterranian Sea and St. of
Gibralta.



Additional Comments:
From: 

Part V

HISTORY of BALDWIN COUNTY GEORGIA
BY MRS. ANNA MARIA GREEN COOK

ILLUSTRATED
ANDERSON. S. C.
Keys-Hearn Printing Co.
-1925—

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