Henry L Bass

Henry Bass, an economist and filmmaker, died March 17 at home in Belmont at the age of 88 from normal pressure hydrocephalus. Henry lived bravely, always up for a new challenge.

He was born in Nashville, Tennessee, the son of Henry Leonidas Bass Sr and Louisa Roseborough, and raised in nearby Hopkinsville, Kentucky, spoiled not only by his parents and grandmother but by three older half-sisters. At the age of 15, with his father dying of emphysema, Henry was sent to boarding school at Sewanee Military Academy in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he was a member of the debate team. Sewanee was a compromise. His father wanted him to go to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he had spent a happy year decades earlier. His mother didn’t want him to go so far away. She had been born in Sewanee and agreed to that.

Henry applied to Williams College without visiting it. One of his sisters had seen a magazine photo showing students in class at Williams College wearing flannel shirts rather than the era’s usual jackets and ties. “Here’s a place for my brother,” she remarked. The admissions director agreed and recruited Henry, a debater at Sewanee, for the Williams debate team. Henry majored in political economy, and the Williams economics department arranged for him to go to graduate school at Harvard. 

He began teaching economics at Northeastern and Boston universities while still in graduate school; they paid substantially more than Harvard, he noted. A grant from the Scientific American for his PhD thesis sent him traveling the country negotiating with major companies to survey high-level managers. While writing it, he taught at Hunter College in New York. His marketing course was particularly popular, and the department chairman suggested that he chair a marketing sub-department.

But the Vietnam War was killing tens of thousands of people a year, and Henry was involved in the New York peace movement. He decided that, as a southerner, he should bring the peace movement to his native region. With his wife, Sue, whom he married in 1966, he moved to Atlanta in March 1967 to create the Atlanta Workshop in Nonviolence. He counseled hundreds of young men about dealing with the draft and conscientious objection in the military.

After his return to the Boston area, Henry was recruited by an old friend, Peter Schlaifer, to help finish a film on labor discontent at General Motors’ Lordstown, Ohio, plant. It became Loose Bolts?, released in 1973. Ten other educational films on labor history and labor management followed. They were widely praised for their objectivity and for combining archival footage and modern interviews to let students feel what it was like to work in a steel or auto plant. Tom Kochan of MIT’s Sloan School of Management commented about Henry’s 2006 steel industry film, Rustbelt Phoenix, “Telling the story in the words of the people who made it happen brings to life the personal drama and the enormous stakes for the families and investors in ways that no words on paper could ever do.” Henry also loved music, both classical and bluegrass. He was on the board of the new music group Boston Musica Viva for nearly 30 years.

Henry leaves his wife of 56 years, Sue, and numerous nieces, nephews, and grand-nieces and nephews. Sue would like to thank his aides, and particularly Eden Ghebremedhin, Hasifah Namugenyi, and the irrepressible Catherine Rogers. Memorial gifts may be directed to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, 799 Washington Street, PO Box 807, Harpers Ferry, WV 25425, or Boston Health Care for the Homeless, 780 Albany St, Boston, MA 02118. No funeral is planned. Henry used to cite Royal Little, founder of Textron, who said in his memoirs, “[I] hope my friends will just think I've taken a long trip.''

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