Nadine Bascom
From Mississippi Wiki
Nadine Bascom (born September 20, 1916) is a sculptor, artist and musician of Creek-Catawba Indian heritage.
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Married to the internationally-known artist and cowboy sculptor Earl W. Bascom, Nadine followed her husband into the world of fine art, becoming a professional sculptor in her own right. Her main emphasis is sculpting floral designs in bas-relief.
Birth
Nadine was born Eunice Nadine Diffey in a log cabin in Madison County near Raytown. Raytown was named for the family of her maternal great grandfather Wiley Franklin Ray, a Civil War veteran, and his wife Nancy Green who had sixteen children together and settled that area of Madison County.
Heritage
Nadine’s father was part Catawba Indian and her mother was part Creek Indian. Nadine’s Creek name is “Flower Woman” or Pakpvkuce-hokte.
Nadine’s paternal ancestry originated in northern France before escaping for religious freedom to Ireland as French Huguenots, later settling in America.
Nadine’s third great grandfather William Diffee settled Diffee’s Ford in Randolph County, North Carolina and was a horseman soldier in the Revolutionary War. He married into the Westmoreland family who were prominent in the settlement of Virginia and were descendants of King Edward III of England.
John Diffey, Nadine’s second great grandfather, served in the War of 1812. Her grandfather Erasmus Walker Diffey served in the Confederate Army and was captured at the Battle of Vicksburg.
Mississippi Plantation
Nadine was raised, along with her five sisters and one brother, on the 2,000 acre Pace Plantation where Raytown Road and Lottville Road meet west of Raytown, Mississippi, and where her parents, maternal grandparents and other relatives worked as sharecroppers.
Nadine worked in the cotton fields picking and hoeing or chopping cotton for fifty cents a day pay, raised chickens for her 4H Club project, tended the family’s vegetable garden, and took care of her mother’s large flower garden. “My mother always grew flowers, lots of flowers and I loved to take care of them,” Nadine remarked.
During her first year in grade school Nadine rode to school in a covered wagon pulled by a team of mules. The covered wagon served as the local “school bus” picking up school-age children from the nearby farms and plantations. She first attended school at Lottville, which was a three-room school. After all the small schools in the area were consolidated into one, she attended the new school at Farmhaven, which was one of the first elementary schools in the state to have an indoor gymnasium.
Music
In 1920, Nadine’s father bought the family an ornate musical pump organ. Without the benefit of music lessons or written music, Nadine learned to play the organ by ear.
Nadine also learned to play the piano. She played the piano every day for her grade school class assembly. When she was just nine years old, Nadine started playing the piano for local dances. She was part of a musical trio, accompanying her 70 year-old grandfather Andrew Jackson Ray who played the fiddle as well as the mandolin and the banjo, and her Uncle Jackson “Bud” Ray who played the guitar and the harmonica. This Raytown trio played for dances and social events at neighboring Plantations from 1925 to 1927.
Nadine also learned to play the guitar and the ukulele, and started to play the violin and the banjo.
In 1927, at the age of 11, Nadine became the official church organist at the little chapel at Raytown. She continued to play at church events, dances, weddings and funerals.
When Nadine was thirteen years old, her father left home, deserting the family. He told the family that he was going to hunt for a lost cow. He took his pistol and his grandfather’s old rifle with him. He left but never returned, abandoning his family, only seeing them on rare occasion but never supporting them. Nadine’s mother finally divorced him.
Move to Columbia
In 1934, Nadine moved, along with her unmarried siblings and her mother, some 90 miles south of Jackson to the area of Darbun, a village west of Columbia in Marion County. They later moved to Columbia.
Nadine excelled in her school activities of sports and academics. During her senior year, she was named “Best All-Around Athlete.” She was named captain of the girls’ basketball team and the girl’s baseball team, where she was nicknamed “Dizzie Dean.” She was also named “Best Academic Student.”
Also in her senior year, Nadine was chosen to be Valedictorian of the graduating class and to be the student speaker at the graduation ceremonies.
Upon graduation from Marion-Walthall High School in 1935, Nadine received both academic and athletic scholarships to attend Pearl River College in Poplarville, Mississippi.
Pearl River College
At Pearl River College, Nadine played first-string guard on the college basketball women’s team in 1935-1936.
Three Division Basketball
A women’s basketball game at that time played what was known as “Three Division” with twelve players on the court at one time. The court was divided into three zones, one zone under each basket and a third zone in the middle of the court. Each team had six players on the court with two players from each team in each zone. All players were restricted to playing only within their respective zones. The guards of one team played under their own basket against the forwards of the opposing team. The guards were to guard their basket, keeping the opposing forwards from scoring. The four centers, two on each team, were only ball handlers and played against each other in their own zone in the center of the court. The centers for a typical team were usually one tall jumper and one shorter ball handler. The ball was passed from one zone to another, but only the forwards made scores.
Two Division Basketball
A modification of the Three Division game was also played by some college teams against which the Pearl River College team competed. It was called “Two Division” basketball. In a Two Division game there were just two zones or half courts. Twelve players were on the court at one time, six players on each team. In each zone, three players from each team would play against three players of the opposing team. Two guards and one center of one zone team would protect their own basket against two forwards and one center of the opposing team. The ball could be passed from one zone to the other, but the players were restricted to their own zone. Forwards and centers only could score.
Nadine played in both Two Division and Three Division games. And although she played the guard position, she once substituted as a forward in a Two Division game and made the winning basket.
College Choir
While at Pearl River College, Nadine also played the piano at college dances and sang in the college choir, taking part in the choir’s live radio broadcast in New Orleans.
After her first year of college at Pearl River, Nadine returned home to Columbia to care for her ailing mother. For income she held a variety of jobs - she picked cotton, worked in a flower shop, worked at Cronin’s Café and worked as a seamstress in the local garment factory earning ten cents an hour.
Columbia Rodeo
In the fall of 1936, Nadine attended the local Columbia Rodeo where she met the rodeo producer, cowboy artist and rodeo champion Earl Bascom. He later became her husband. [1]
Earl Bascom and his younger brother Weldon were cowboys from Alberta, Canada working for the B and H Ranch near Arm, Mississippi. As they were also professional rodeo cowboys, they came to Columbia to produce and direct the town’s first rodeo.
These two Bascom boys have been called the “Fathers of Mississippi Rodeo” having started what is now a Mississippi tradition when they produced rodeos in Columbia in 1935, 1936 and 1937. The Columbia Rodeo of 1935 was the first rodeo in the world to be held outdoors at night under electric lights.
Nadine's brother-in-law, Ernest Buhrer, had two wild mules that were made part of the rodeo stock. Nadine's brother Oliver trailed the mules some 17 miles from the farm to the rodeo grounds.
Georgia
Early in 1939, Nadine’s mother passed away. Nadine then moved to Brunswick, Georgia where she served in the Southern States Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, under the direction of President LeGrand Richards.
Phoenix, Arizona
In September of 1939 having finished her Church assignment, Nadine moved to Phoenix, Arizona to live with relatives. She traveled to Arizona with her friend, Mary Griner.
Mary’s father made a yearly trek driving a loaded stake-bed truck, hauling sacks of sweet potatoes from Columbia to the markets in El Paso, Texas, and then returning to Mississippi with a load of onions.
Nadine and Mary hitched a ride on this potato truck, traveling several days on the road. Each night they slept under the stars in the truck bed with sacks of sweet potatoes used as lumpy mattress and pillow. From El Paso, the two young ladies traveled to Phoenix by train.
In Phoenix, Nadine lived with her cousins, the Lester Flake family, whose progenitors were originally from Mississippi but moved west founding the town of Snowflake, Arizona. Nadine got a job as a car hop waitress at a drive-in restaurant, and also worked in a bakery.
While in Phoenix, her cowboy friend Earl Bascom came to see her. The rodeo season had ended, and he was on his way to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah for his last year of college.
Earl stayed in Phoenix long enough to propose marriage to Nadine, which she accepted. They were married a few weeks later in Salt Lake City, Utah in December of 1939.
Brigham Young University
As newly weds, they lived in Provo, Utah, where Nadine registered as a BYU student along with her husband. Together they attended some art classes as she was hired as the live model which her husband and the other art students were drawing. She was paid eighteen cents an hour by the BYU Art Department to be their professional model.
California
In the spring of 1940, after her husband graduated from BYU, they moved to Southern California, traveling there in a 1932 roadster with the rumble seat stuffed with their trunk and baggage.
Once settled, Earl was to attend a California art school. But he chose first to hit the rodeo summer circuit for one last time. Nadine traveled with him. Earl’s brother Weldon and his wife Rose also traveled with them. At the Raymond Stampede in Alberta, Earl won his last All-Around Rodeo Championship. Earl’s final rodeo was at Red Lodge, Montana after which he retired from rodeo.
Because World War II had started, Earl was not able to attend art school as planned, but worked in the shipyards of Long Beach building ships for the war.
Over the next several years Earl and Nadine remained in the Los Angeles area living in the towns of Lynwood and South Gate. Earl worked in the home building industry, first with a plumbing company and then as a plastering contractor.
He also worked for the Flying V Ranch in Mira Loma, California and helped on a ranch in Perris, California.
In 1950, Earl and Nadine moved their family to their own ranch in Ontario, California in San Bernardino County. They finally moved to the high desert area of California in Victorville and Apple Valley in 1957.
College Degrees
After Earl and Nadine raised their family of five children, she attended Victor Valley College, graduating in 1963 with the college’s first graduating class receiving an AA degree. She attended Brigham Young University again, graduating in 1966 with a BA degree in elementary education, doing her student teaching in Sandy, Utah. She also did post graduate studies at various Universities in Southern California receiving a “Life-Time Teaching Credential.”
School Teacher
Nadine fulfilled her life-long dream to be a school teacher. Starting at age 50, she taught elementary school for 22 years in the California school districts of Barstow and Hesperia.
She also worked as a substitute teacher in Victorville, Apple Valley, Wrightwood, Phelan and Oro Grande. She retired from school teaching at age 72.
Floral Business
For many years, Nadine owned and ran a floral business with catering services for weddings and social events in Utah and California. And she worked for a time in an ice cream and confectionary store.
Restauranteur
Nadine and her husband were part owners of a Denny’s restaurant. The family is also part owners of two restaurants - Dooners Fresh Seasoned Grille and Bascom Ranch Southwest Grille.
Music Band
Now well passed 93 years of age, Nadine continues using her musical talents, performing with or having performed with the Diamond B's, the Buffalo Nickels String Band, the Pioneer String Band, the Chuckwagon Crew, and the Bascom Family Band while performing at schools, colleges, libraries and pioneer living history events in Southern California. [2] Nadine is a member of the Southwest Bluegrass Association and the California State Old Time Fiddler's Association.
Fine Art
A nonagenarian, Nadine Bascom continues her late husband’s legacy in the world of fine art, creating her own sculptures. She usually signs her work as E. N. Bascom or E. Nadine Bascom. Her sculptures are cast in limited editions in bronze and precious metals under the direction of her son John Bascom, who is a master moldmaker and foundryman. He insures the quality of production and has operated the family-owned bronze casting foundry and the art business of Bascom Fine Art since 1972.
Art Studio
In her studio at the Bascom Ranch in Victorville, California, which she once shared with her late husband, she continues to create her artwork. Influenced by her background as a professional florist and as a musician, her sculpture work of floral designs and motif has been acclaimed for their Van Gogh-like qualities.
