Samuel Bason

Samuel Murphey Bason, known as Sam Bason (December 3, 1894 – January 15, 1986), was a banker in Yanceyville, North Carolina, who served nonconsecutively from 1947 to 1959 as a Democrat in the North Carolina State Senate for District 15 in Caswell and Rockingham counties.

Bason was a son of William Henry Bason (1847-1927), a veteran of the Confederate Army of the American Civil War, and the former Flora Murphey (1866-1948). He attended Burlington High School, at which he played baseball; the institution is located in Burlington in his native Alamance County in northern North Carolina. He then attended the nearby Oak Ridge Military Academy in Oak Ridge in Guilford County. He served for twenty-two months in the United States Army in World War I. He began working at the rural Bank of Yanceyville, which used the motto: "The Bank Whose First Interest is Caswell". The bank temporarily closed during the Great Depression, but Bason worked feverishly and successfully to reopen it. Prior to stepping down after fifty-two years of service, Bason managed to merge the Bank of Yanceyville with a larger institution, Northwestern Bank. Bason also established Caswell Insurance and Realty Company which sold fire, life, and hail insurance to tobacco farmers. In 1937, Governor Clyde Hoey appointed Bason to a four-year term on the North Carolina State Highway Commission. In 1947, he began serving three nonconsecutive terms in the North Carolina Senate.

Bason and his wife, the former Martha Eliza "Marnie" Hatchett (1896-1993), had three children, Carolyn Elizabeth Bason Long (1922-2015), William Hatchett Bason (1924-2000), and Dorothy Helen Bason (1926-2011). Carolyn Long, a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro , worked for Clyde Hoey, who after his gubernatorial service became a U.S. senator. When Hoey died in office, she became the long-term secretary to his successor, Sam J. Ervin, Jr. In 1969, she became the second wife of Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana, to whom she was married until his death in 2003. Carolyn Long was active in a plethora of charitable and civic causes and historical preservation during her 34-year marriage to Senator Long.

In 1979, after suffering from a series of strokes, Bason entered the Roman Eagle Memorial Home in Danville, Virginia. He died early in 1986 at the age of ninety-one. Bason, his wife, and children are all interred at the Yanceyville Presbyterian Church Cemetery. He was a deacon, elder, and Sunday school superintendent at the church. He was also active in Rotary International and the Masonic lodge. His son-in-law, Russell Long, is interred in Baton Rogue, Louisiana.