Betrayal In Blood. Michael Benson
chose the names Samantha and Tabatha for her daughters. Pretty names, but the fact that Ginny chose those two names in particular is revealing. Those names exist in combination in popular culture. They were the names of the mother-and-daughter witches in the 1960s TV comedy series Bewitched.
The show ran from 1964 through 1972. It was about a mortal man who married a witch. The husband didn’t want his wife to use her magic because he hoped to live a normal suburban existence, but each week the comedic situation inevitably led to Samantha using her powers to resolve the plot. In the end, Darrin loved her anyway.
Actress Elizabeth Montgomery played Samantha Stephens. On January 13, 1966, during episode fifty-four, the Stephenses had a baby, to coincide with Montgomery’s real-life pregnancy.
On the show the Stephenses had a daughter and named her Tabitha, with an i. But, on the credits that ran at the end of each episode, the baby’s name was listed as Tabatha, with an a.
It was Montgomery’s idea to name the character Tabitha. In an interview published in the February 1967 edition of Screen Stories, Montgomery said, “The name was my idea. I loved it, because it was so old-fashioned. I got it from one of the daughters of Edward Andrews, the actor.... But, somehow or other, her name came out ‘Tabatha’ on the credit roll, and that’s the way it’s been ever since. Honestly, I shudder every time I see it. It’s like a squeaky piece of chalk scratching on my nerves.”
After twenty-one episodes of mystery, it was revealed, to tremendous ratings, that the baby, like her mother, had supernatural powers. In 1967, at Montgomery’s insistence, the spelling of the character’s name was changed to “Tabitha” on the end credits—a correction that Ginny Bassett apparently did not notice.
When her second daughter was born, Ginny named her Tabatha, with an a. Ginny had named her daughters after TV witches, beautiful and benevolent witches, for sure, but witches nonetheless.
According to Ginny, “You know, I didn’t watch Bewitched that much, but I loved the names. If I would have had another girl, she would have been Sabrina,” Ginny said, referring to the name of a fictional witch, this one first appearing in the Archie comics, and later the subject of an ABC-TV show, Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
“It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t have four girls, because the only one left was Endora, and she would have killed me,” Ginny added, referring to the character of Samantha’s highly flamboyant and somewhat villainous mother. Endora, played by Agnes Moorehead, encouraged Samantha to act like a witch and could never get her son-in-law’s name right, most frequently referring to him as “Dur wood,” instead of Darrin.
Ginny remembered those first few years with her baby girls. She remembered them clearly, because they were the only years she had.
“Sammy was first. She was—they were both wonderful babies. Neither one of them gave me problems. Sammy would get sick. She would catch a cold. When Sammy would teethe, she would get such a fever on the inside that, when it came out, she would just pass out on me. Scared me to death. But, as soon as the tooth came in, she was fine. There was nothing. It was just one big scare and that was it.”
In the meantime, Leroy had left college and had taken a job that involved considerably more travel. He joined the army. With a baby to take care of, Ginny saw her husband rarely, but it was better than never. After one visit from Leroy, Ginny found herself expecting a second blessed event.
“Tabby was born small,” Ginny said. “She weighed four pounds twelve ounces. The doctors told me she was two months premature, but trust me, she was born nine months to the day. And I know because I only saw my husband once during the time I got pregnant. He was in the service at the time. Even though she was small, there were no health problems. They had her on premature formula for a little while, but she didn’t need it.
“We brought Tabby home in a boot box, if you can believe that. The hospital wouldn’t let me take her home unless we had a warm blanket. Well, she was born in October and I didn’t have a warm enough blanket that the hospital thought was appropriate, so we cut holes in a boot box and wrapped her in a little receiving blanket, and that was how we took her home.
“When we got Tabby home, Sammy took one look at the box and said, ‘Present for me!’ I opened the box and she goes, ‘Mine!’ Tabby was basically Sammy’s from that point on. She helped me hold her. They were definitely close. Both girls were healthy, happy babies.
“Tabby was bubbly. Right from the moment she got up in the morning. She was disgustingly happy in the morning. I’m a grouch in the morning. It takes me an hour or so, a cup of coffee and a cigarette. When Tabby was just little, she would jump on me while I was still asleep and she would say, ‘Up, Mommy! Up!’ She wasn’t just a morning person. She was an all-day person. Even when she was older and she would come to visit with the kids, she would wake them up in the morning by jumping at them.
“She would lay in bed with me, with her face about three inches away from mine, and she’d say, ‘Good morning, sunshine. Time to get up.’
“I would say, ‘It’s morning, ‘Tab,’ there’s nothing good about it.’
“And she’d say, ‘Yes there is. I’m here.’
“Sammy is more like me, a little bit slower to get started in the morning—so you can imagine what a trial Tab was for us first thing in the morning.
“I do crafts and I made a sign that I hung in my dining room in Iowa when Tab would come to visit. The sign said, ‘Cheerfulness in the morning is strictly forbidden. All violators will be shot!’ In response, Tab sent me a T-shirt that said, ‘Instant human, just add coffee.’”
But that was years later when mother and daughter tried desperately to make up for lost time; so much time had been lost. Baby Tabby went to stay with her paternal grandmother off and on from the time she was nine months old. Then Leroy was transferred to Germany and Ginny didn’t want to make the trip with him, so they broke up.
Ginny was moving on with her life. In 1979, when Samantha was three and Tabby was two, they again went to live with the Bassetts. This time the move from Iowa to Greenwood, New York, was permanent.
According to Tabby’s aunt Lorraine Warriner, Leroy Bassett’s sister, “My mother raised her because my brother was in the service and traveled a lot.”
Here’s how Ginny remembered it: “My husband went to Germany and I was working two jobs at the time. I was working at an art store during the day and at a restaurant during the weekends. Leroy was going to New York to visit his parents and he asked if he could take the girls with him, and I said sure. Leroy and I were already having problems at that time. And, he didn’t bring them back. By the time I got up enough money to go to New York and pick them up, I found that New York had a law that you can’t take children out of a house that they’ve been in for longer than six weeks without a court order—or something along those lines—even if you are the children’s mother. I was young and dumb. I was nineteen at the time, I believe. Leroy and I divorced soon after that. We just couldn’t get along.”
Hearing of Ginny’s claims that she didn’t give up the babies, but rather sort of lost them, Samantha huddled with Grandma Essie, and they said the claim was simply not true.
“Dad and Mom brought us to Grandma’s and Mom was going to come back later after she got settled in her new home,” Samantha said. “Dad was going to Germany in the army. Mom told Gram to get custody of us because she was going to be a trucker, and so Gram did. Then she was mad that Gram did. Mom asked to take us to her parents, but Gram wouldn’t let her because she didn’t know if she would get us back. Gram did not tell her to get a court order if she wanted us. She asked to take us to visit, but not to keep.”
However they got there, the girls were at the Bassetts’ to stay. They would be brought up in a strong religious atmosphere. The entire Bassett family was very involved with the local Community of Christ Church in Greenwood. Ginny was a Catholic girl.
After the girls moved to Greenwood to live with Grandma Essie