| Notes |
- Willard was the editor of "The Pacific Weekly" in the early 1930's in Carmel, California. He had a daughter that
went to San Jose State University.
Willard followed in his father's occupation as a newspaperman. He
started in Oakland, California in 1904 and covered the San Francisco
earthquake two years later. He worked as reporter and editor for many major
west coast papers, as well as one each in Boston, and Providence, Rhode
Island. In the early 1920's, he started up and owned the Honolulu Times of
Hawaii. He was also associated with the Carmel Cymbal and Pacific Weekly
magazine both of Carmel, California. After the war, he returned to Hawaii to
become John H. Wilson's (mayor of Honolulu) administrative assistant. Until
his death he was very active in the Democratic Party.
Los Angeles Times, 27 Jan 1954
Hawaii Mayor’s Assistant Dies
HONOLULU, T.H., Jan. 26 (U.P.) – Willard K. Bassett, administrative
assistant to Honolulu Mayor John H. Wilson and a well-known California
newspaperman, died at Queen’s Hospital here today.
Bassett, 66, succumbed to injuries suffered when he was struck by a
car near his Waikiki home Jan. 17.
Bassett’s wife, the former Miriam Stacker Holloway whom he married in
1952, was at his bedside when he died. He also leaves three children by former
marriages, James M. Bassett of San Francisco, Mrs. Wilma McKay of Monterey,
Cal., and Oliver Bassett, who also lives in Californi
BASSETT DEAD
End Comes at 2 a.m., Wife at Bedside
Honolulu Advertiser 26 Jan 1954
Mayor's Aide Loses Fight For Life
W.K. Bassett, administrative assistant to the mayor and long a stormy
figure on Hawaii's political scene, died early this morning at Queen's
hospital of complications arising from injuries he received when he was struck
by a car January 17.
He would have been 67 years old on Feb 15.
His wife was at his bedside when he died. He had taken a sudden turn
for the worse yesterday after apparently being on the road to recovery from a
crushed chest and multiple other injuries suffered when a car flung him 80
feet through the night air on Kalakaua Ave.
Mr. Bassett, destined to leaven Honolulu's political scene for many
years, was born in Oakland, California on Feb 15, 1887.
In a biographical sketch which strangely he wrote himself a short time
ago, he explained that he was "christened Willard Kenneth, much to his
disgust."
Throughout his adult life, he preferred the use of his initials.
During one of the periods when "WKB" was much in the headlines, he quipped he
could think of only three men who would be instantly recognized from their
initials by newspaper readers: FDR,HST and WKB.
It was his scorching wit, together with his refusal ever to compromise
on the principles of political liberalism which he held, that made Mr. Bassett
a center of controversy in the news.
His command of the English language and his knowledge of literature
made him a writer of unusual abilities.
Through his use of first the printed word and later the radi
became a potent influence in the political scene here.
Mr. Bassett's father was James Madison Bassett, a colorful personality
who had crossed the plains to California in 1856 in the gold-rush period, he
was a mining partner for a time with Joaquin Miller, later renowned as a
Western poet.
The elder Mr. Bassett became an editorial writer on the San Francisco
Chronicle, and then editor and publisher of the Los Angeles Herald, now the
Herald Express.
He later was editor and publisher of the Golden Era in San Francisco,
where Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) and Bret Harth were typesetters for hi
The father, too, influenced political events by his writings. He was
the author of a noted series of "Old Pard" open letters to Colis P.
Huntington, providing the groundwork for Hiram Johnson's fight against the
railroad stranglehold on California.
W.K. Bassett was to devote his life to two interests: Newspapers and
politics.
When his father died in 1903 he left Oakland high school to help
support his family, and a year later he became a cub reporter on the Oakland
Enquirer.
He was a reporter on the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the
earthquake and fire in 1906, and was on the staff of the Examiner there over
the period of the 1916 Preparedness Day bombing and the investigation a
trials that followed.
He was fond of telling the story of his first trip to Honolu
1919 inspired by a run of luck in a payday dice game at the old San Francisco
Newspapermen's club.
Within a day of his arrival, he had become a member of the staff of
the Pacific Commercial Advertiser. He remained as a feature writer and
waterfront reporter on this paper for 21 months, until his resignation Feb.
25, 1921, to become secretary to John H. Wilson, who had been appointed mayor
to succeed Joseph J. Fern.
He also taught journalism at McKinley high school in 1920 and 21, and
there inaugurated the school paper, The Pinion.
In 1923, Mr. Bassett made his one successful entry into the field of
elective politics, when he ran and was elected to the board of supervisors.
Political old-timers recall his election-eve speech at Aala park as a
masterpiece, and give it credit for his election. He later listed his campaign
expenses: 90 cents.
It was a stormy period for city politics - marked by at least one fist
fight on the floor of the board of supervisors - and in Mr. Bassett's life,
marked by two libel charges.
The first stemmed from publication in "New Freedom" of his charge that
sugar planters were responsible for the murder of a worker. He was convicted
and fined $50.
The second came in 1924, after Mr. Bassett and a group of associates
founded the Honolulu Times, a daily paper, with Mr. Bassett as president and
editor. In it, Mr. Bassett referred to his fellow supervisor, Ben Hollingen as
"a cad". The libel case did not come to trial.
The Times continued its lively career for six and one-half months,
until Mr. Bassett left the Islands abruptly Sept. 17, 19?? on the Matsonia,
leaving his resignations as supervisor and editor.
He worked on the San Francisco Call for a year, and then mov
Carmel, Calif., where he founded a weekly paper, the Carmel Cymba
He went to the East Coast in 1927, and worked on both the Boston
Herald and the Providence, R.I. Bulletin.
He returned to Carmel in 1923, and in 1935 founded the Pacific Weekly,
a liberal magazine with national circulation. As editor, he sought to keep it
open to all viewpoints, and Communists and anti-Communists were among those
who fought out their differences of opinion on its pages.
It eventually was the Communists who forced the magazine out of
business, Mr. Bassett said.
He revived the Cymbal in 1935, and continued its publication until
1941, when he went to join the staff of the San Francisco New
in 1945, Mr. Wilson, then director of public welfare, called Mr.
Bassett to Hawaii to prepare a special report on the departmen
After that was completed, Mr. Bassett returned to the Advertiser
staff, almost 27 years to the day after his first employment by the paper.
Mr. Wilson was elected mayor, and when he took office in 1947 he
appointed Mr. Bassett his administrative assistant, an office he has he
since.
Frequently the target of public criticism, Mr. Bassett habitually met
it head-on.
A long-time friend of the labor movement, Mr. Bassett in 1947 appeared
as a member of an ILWU negotiating committee in pineapple wage talks. T
companies' negotiating committee issued a statement, "amazed" at his action,
but Mr. Bassett continued as a committee member.
In 1949, while vacationing on the Big Island, he delivered an address
to striking longshoremen in Hilo. Again there was a storm of criticism, and
again Mr. Bassett defended his right to act as he saw proper, in his role as a
private citizen.
Several times, under fire, Mr. Bassett tendered his resignation as
Mayor Wilson's assistant because he felt he was "a political detriment to him".
Each time, the mayor refused to accept it.
He outlined his political philosophy last December, when the Junior
Chamber of Commerce invited him to address its member
"I am a liberal, not a Communist," he declared, and he said he
believed the success of Communism in America "would be a catastrophe
Mr. Bassett married Marguerite Baptista of San Francisco in 1908, and
they had three children. The youngest died in 1945. The surviving children are
James M. Bassett, of San Francisco, and his twin sister, Wilma, who now is
Mrs. Theodore McKay of Monterey, Calif.
Mr. Bassett later married Dorothy Castelhun of Newburyport, Mass., a
writer of note, and they had one son, Oliver, now living in Californi
Mrs. Bassett died here in June, 1950.
In December, 1952, Mr. Bassett married Miriam Stacker Holloway, who
he first met on the staff of The Advertiser in 1919.
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Bassett Family Association Database
1887 - 1954 (66 years)