Morton Bassan Obituary

MORTON BASSAN, JR. Morton Bassan, Jr. was born in Seattle on June 28, 1951. Growing up, Mort's favorite Hanukkah gifts were chemistry sets. Through endless play with these sets, he developed his sense of adventure and interests in invention, abstract thinking, and practical hands-on work sometimes for mischief but mostly for good that defined his life. As a child, he was notorious for making and throwing cherry bombs, including causing a fire at summer camp that promptly ended his stay. At Mercer Island High School, his favorite class was shop. As a senior, having completed his graduation requirements early, he attended shipbuilding school, to which he commuted by hitchhiking. Leaving home after high school, he held a variety of jobs, including working on a king crab processing ship in the Aleutian Islands and as a carpenter with a local Seattle construction company. At the age of 20, he bought his first apartment building. He paid his way through college, first attending community college and later the University of Washington, where he majored in anthropology. After college, he got his pilot's license, did another stint on a king crab processing ship (which sank!), and leased an abandoned orange farm on the Big Island of Hawaii. One day, he decided to visit Oahu and take a bus tour, where he met the woman who would become his wife of 42 years. Together, they bought and ran the orange farm. When the county could not supply enough water for irrigation purposes, they bought a broken-down oil drill in Kentucky. He spent months fixing it before shipping it to Hilo, driving it to the farm himself, drilling a well himself, and getting a well-drilling contractor's license. Similarly, when trucking costs skyrocketed, he bought a semi-trailer truck, got his commercial driver's license, and drove their oranges from the farm to Kawaihae. He also converted the farm from a conventional one to an organic one before organic produce was popular or well-known, took business school accounting courses at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and successfully lobbied Congress to pass federal legislation that made it easier for Hawaii's farmers to export produce. Due to his legislative work, in 1993, he was the United States Small Business Administration's Exporter of the Year for the State of Hawaii. After losing the farm to crop theft and local corruption, he built a successful accounting practice and was awarded several patents on novel organic pest management systems that he began inventing while farming. He loved his children and sought to give them the best education and values he could imagine. On July 29, 2023, at 72 years-old, he died peacefully surrounded by his loving family. The cause was cancer. He is survived by his wife Keiko; their children Sophia and Joshua; his sisters Lauren Fitzgerald, Betsy, Sarah, and Amy Martyanov; and 22 nieces and nephews.