National Volunteer Week: Morris Bassham

April 10 through 16 is National Volunteer Week. The Library & Archives Center has some great and dedicated volunteers. This is the first in a series of posts about the volunteers here.

Meet Mr. Morris Bassham.

Mr. Bassham has been a dedicated volunteer in the Archives Center since October 2008. He has been cataloguing our large photograph collection; he reviews the card catalogue and completes worksheets for each image. (This process creates a hard copy of the catalogue information to include with the object file.) Periodically, I review his work and add it to the growing collection management database.

Personally, Mr. Bassham has an interesting background. Having grown up in Midland, attending Midland High School, Morris became a petroleum engineer with Sinclair Oil & Gas from which he retired when they merged with ARCO. Not only did he attend Texas Tech University, Mr. Bassham also attended art school in Minneapolis and Sul Ross University. He also spent twenty-one months in the military and became active with the Confederate Air Force for twenty-five years, although he is no longer a pilot. His interest in the military does not end there: he is interested in aviation history, from the Wright Brothers to the Enola Gay, as well as the history of the Alamo and the State of Texas.

Morris is also an active volunteer within the community, having devoted time to the research library at the Commemorative Air Force.