For the last 30 years, Lance Bass has been inexorably famous, known to the general public as one of the five founding members of boundary-breaking boy band *NSYNC. Yet amongst his family, he’s still considered the second-most famous member.
That No. 1 spot among the Bass clan continues to belong to his paternal grandfather Jimmy, an icon in his hometown of Laurel, Miss., thanks to his years of military service during World War II. “He’s so proud of his service, so proud of his family, and so proud of his town,” Bass tells Billboard of his grandfather over a video call. “He’s the famous one in our family, not me. I’m just a little side note.”
Yet while Bass grew up hearing his grandfather’s stories from the front he says it wasn’t until very recently that he got to learn much more about Jimmy Bass’ service in WWII. In his latest partnership with Ancestry as part of the organization’s Thank You for Your Service campaign, Bass got to learn even more about both of his grandfathers’ service in the war.
The new campaign from the genealogy company is designed to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, providing users with free access to over 200 million documents from WWII from Nov. 10 to 12, in honor of Veteran’s Day in the U.S.
For Bass, that access allowed him and his family members to find even more information about both of his’ military history, including enlistment cards, photos, and even documentation that his maternal grandfather Elza was a dance hall manager, a fact that he’d never learned before his death in 2019.
“It made so much sense, because he loved to square dance — so it was just kind of fun to take that picture I saw of him and put him in this dance hall and see him in that element of knowing that he just loved that,” Bass says.
Bass’ new work with Ancestry comes at a critical time, he says. With misinformation spreading rampantly across the internet — in some cases at the behest of Donald Trump’s administration in the U.S. — Bass hopes that access to these records reminds people the importance of preserving history so we don’t make the same mistakes of the past.
“We know history repeats itself. We’ve been told that over and over and over again — but as you can see, it’s happening again,” he says. “I feel like no one’s really paying attention to that and honoring what they fought for, because I feel like we’re just going backwards right now. It’s an insult to what these brave men and women went through.”
Specifically, Bass points to the administration’s orders to scrub government websites of certain words, photos and historical references — oftentimes related to the LGBTQ+ community, anti-racism efforts and the civil rights movements of the past — as an attempt to alter our perception of reality.
“It is important that we tell these stories of the past in a truthful way, because so easily you can rewrite history,” he says. “We see it happening right now, in front of our eyes, they’re physically rewriting history on websites of our official government documents. It’s insane. What is this Twilight Zone that we’re living in?”
Bass takes it a step further and points out many of those same politicians use their ties to the military to redefine what is and is not patriotic — which, he says, is not what his grandparents fought for. “It’s sad to see people using veterans and military service and their patriotism … they’ve changed what patriotism is,” he says.
It’s why Bass calls it an “honor” to learn more about his own family’s history of service. “It makes you proud. You’re honored to be attached to that past, and you get to learn from the past,” he says.
Even when looking at his own history, Bass says he sees the influence of both of his grandfathers imbued in him. After *NSYNC celebrated their 30th anniversary earlier this year — “it’s insane that that went so quickly,” Bass quips — the singer found himself thinking about the ways his grandfather Jimmy helped mold his own outlook on his work.
“Everything correlates to how he is as a person. It really was the biggest influence in my life,” he says with a smile. “I was always raised with this man that everyone loved, especially the way that he just brought this positivity with all the stories he would tell, and the way he treated people. I think he really rubbed off on me, and my personality really comes out because of him.”
