E.C. was born in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee on July 21, 1923 to parents Lex and Mabel Claire Bashaw. He and wife Bettye were married in 1945 and enjoyed sixty-one years of marriage. E.C. served as an ensign in the US Navy during World War II. After an honorable discharge, E.C. received his B.S. degree in agriculture in 1947 and an M.S. degree in agronomy in 1948 from Purdue University. He served as assistant agronomist with the Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station from 1948 to 1951 when he resumed graduate study at Texas A&M University where he received his Ph.D. in plant breeding in 1954. He served as assistant professor of agronomy at Texas A&M from 1953 to 1955 when he accepted a position as a Research Geneticist with the USDA, Agricultural Research Service in College Station, Texas. He conducted research on the breeding and cytogenetics of forage grasses. He was a world authority on apomixes. Consequently, he traveled world-wide in the course of his research and was one of the first Westerners asked to share his knowledge with researchers at the Novosibirsk State Agricultural University in Russia in the early 1970s. He developed and released the first artificially produced apomictic crop variety for which he received numerous awards. E.C. continued as a member of the Soil and Crop Sciences Department staff and Graduate Faculty at Texas A&M, teaching a course in microtechnique and supervising graduate students in grass cytogenetics until his retirement in 1993 after 42 years of service to the US Department of Agriculture.
E.C. enjoyed rose gardening, feeding and observing birds and squirrels, and treasured spending time with his family. He was a member of First Baptist Church of College Station and a member of the Texas Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.
He is preceded in death by his wife Bettye Bashaw, and daughter Cheryl Bashaw.
E.C. is survived by his daughter, Jane Bashaw Kazleman of College Station; granddaughters, Cristina Reintjes and husband Chris, and their three sons, David, Henry, and John Michael all of Jacksonville, Fla., Courtney Spencer and husband Aaron, and their son Paxton all of Sneads Ferry, N.C., and Elizabeth Wooten and husband Jacob of College Station, Texas; and grandson, Thomas Kazleman and his daughters, MacKenzie and Savannah of Jacksonville, N.C.
Visitation will be 1:30 p.m. Saturday, February 1, at First Baptist Church in College Station with funeral service to follow at 2:00 p.m. with Reverend Troy Allen, Dr. Malcolm Bane and Reverend David Rowland officiating. Pallbearers will be Thomas Kazleman, Chris Reintjes, Aaron Spencer, Jacob Wooten, and Byron Burson. Interment will follow at College Station Cemetery.
Memorials may be made to the First Baptist Church General Fund, 2300 Welsh Ave., College Station, Texas 77845-6536.
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