Len Bassham, whose legal first name is ‘Warlen,’ was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1940. He was named by his dad, who took the first half of Warren, his own name, plus the last half of Helen, his wife’s name, to form Warlen. As far as Len knows, he’s the only person named Warlen in the entire world. (If you know of someone else, be sure to let us know on the Contact Page!)
A fairly recent picture is at the bottom of this page.
When he was four years old, his Uncle Bryan (his dad’s youngest brother, then fourteen years of age) gave him the nickname ‘Len,’ and it stuck. As mentioned before, Len’s Dad’s name was Warren, and everybody assumed that Warlen was a typo and that Len was really Warren, Jr., so the nickname helped clear up the confusion. All through school, including college, he was ‘Len,’ and even his official transcripts (until he went to Juilliard) are in that name!
Having started music lessons at age 5 at the LaMont School of Music (then an independent school but now part of the University of Denver), Len then began studying piano and organ with his maternal grandmother. He continued those instruments through high school and college, and after graduating from Pacific Union College in the summer of 1961, attended The Juilliard School in New York City. His choral composition When Lilacs Last won first prize in the National Young Composers’ Contest in 1965. (Professionally printed copies of the piece, which has never been performed in public, will soon be available in our online store, along with several other of his compositions.)
Len has been married twice, and has a daughter and a son from his first marriage. He is a widower, having lost his second wife, Carol, in 2006. His only grandchildren are by informal ‘adoption.’ (One of them took the attached photo, below.)
He has lived in six different states, including Arkansas, where he presently resides. (His father was born in Arkansas, but Len unfortunately never visited the state until after his dad had passed away.)
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In addition to being a composer, Len is also a prose writer and sometime poet. To see an except of his prose style, see below:
From his Short Story Viewpoint (5200 words) here is the first 1000 words. (copyright ©2024, LegendKeeper LLC). [Note: a shorter version of this story was originally submitted to the Ladies’ Home Journal many years ago, when they still accepted fiction. They rejected it as being ‘too slight.’ Unfortunately, that sort of market is now ‘kaput,’ and the story is not qualified as Literary to submit to University Journals or similar.]
VIEWPOINT
a story by
Aspen Keldrick
The boldface heading of the want-ad had said, “Room With a View,” and that was as far as she had made it, at first. Because she was feeling a bit needy, and ‘View’ was one of the things she felt she might surely need. Distance, at least— and distance often implied a longer and farther look.
But she had lived in this small city all of her life, and she couldn’t for the life of her think of any place in the environs that offered anything that could be construed as a ‘View.’ The North Rim of the Grand Canyon had a View. The Empire State Building had a View. This town didn’t. It was true that there was a hill of sorts, between downtown and the river, and she supposed if one constructed a building just right, oriented in exactly the necessary way, one could create something that approximated a view, with a lower case ‘v.’ Barely. But a Room with a View, in the Forster sense, in this place, rather than in Florence, Italy? Probably not.
So she read the rest of the ad: “Large furnished studio with convertible bed, small kitchen, smaller bath, and carpets. Appropriate for single person or a young couple with infant. First and last month plus cleaning deposit.” There was a phone number, and that was it. No address, no price, no further information.
She had called the number. A woman had answered. Businesslike, but neither cold nor warm. Just ‘there.’
And the woman had said to “come on over,” and had given her an address, and a hint at directions. But it wasn’t the woman who answered the door; it was the woman’s husband.
“I called,” she said. “About the studio?”
He didn’t answer, just nodded. And waved her in.
He led her down a flight of stairs, into a daylight basement. Pointed to a table, and a chair, and a paper document lying on the table, and a pen. She got the hint, sat down, and began filling in the blanks.
Applicant’s name. Hmm. She might as well use her real one. It was a small city, yes, but not so small that everyone knew absolutely everyone else, and she assumed putting her real name on the paper would not trigger any negative reactions if someone did happen to know who she was. So she entered “Sue George,” and looked up to see if he was watching.
He was.
“Hell of a name for a lawyer’s wife, right?” she asked, grinning. “I have no idea who George is, but if I ever find him, I’ll know what to do to him!”
There was no response, either verbal or visual.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s an old joke, first told at my wedding. And not by me.”
She bent her head back to the paper. Previous address. That was a bit of a larger problem. If she put the address of the huge house— not exactly a home, but a house nonetheless— where she had lived for the last twenty-three years, alone with her husband and childless, and if this couple knew the area at all well, they might very well assume that this present neighborhood was beneath her, beneath her social status, and would therefore politely shoo her away. So she put the name and address of the well-known hotel where she had been staying for the past two nights. It was expensive, yes, but then all hotels were, so it wouldn’t tell them anything.
But the next question made that ploy rather beside the point. If less than one year at previous address, please list the address prior to that, and the length of time lived there.
There was no way around it. If she made up something they would check and they would reject the application for lying. In her current mental state, she could remember with certainly no address other than the one of the house she had recently lived in, so she wrote that down, and shook slightly to do it.
Number in proposed residential party. She very firmly inscribed the Arabic numeral ‘1,’ complete with the tiny crossbar at the bottom and the small hook on the left side of the top. There was no difficulty at all with that answer! She smiled.
Phone number where you can be reached at most reasonable times. She wrote down her cell number and then looked up at the man. “This isn’t a standard form. You developed it yourself.”
“Gloria and I did, yes,” he said. He wasn’t as business-like as his wife had been on the phone. On the other hand, not warm, exactly, but somehow ‘looser’ than she had sounded, and certainly not cold or rude.
“My name is Wence,” he continued. “Short for Wenceslas, believe it or not. Wencelsas and Gloria. Two Christmas Carols passing in the night. Except we veered to run parallel instead, and here we are, all these years later, still praising each other in holiday terms.” He made a shy smile.
She returned her gaze to the form. Source of income. No amount asked, surprisingly, but merely the source. “Employment,” was the extent of her answer. It didn’t ask how long, or where, so she didn’t volunteer that information.
Preference of month to month or one year lease. She left that blank, shaking her head slightly as she passed the line by. That seemed to be all. She flipped the form over, to be sure, but the other side was blank. She looked up. He had been watching her. Reading the answers as she wrote them. He already knew everything she had said.
“You may think it odd to be asked to fill out the application form before you have even seen the apartment,” he said. “We find that doing so rather separates the serious lookers from the lookie-loos. I believe you to be serious.”
“I am,” she said, and almost added, ‘you have no idea,’ but didn’t.
“It’s the only studio in the building,” he said. “There are three floors, plus the daylight basement where Gloria and I live,” he said. “Alone, no children.” He smiled again.
She smiled back. . . .