I also cut my teeth with BASIC. First was on the Apple ][s at school, then I got a Vic-20 at home. A lot of the cooler games for the Vic-20 were just a boatload of integer data you had to type in from magazines, not a very educational experience. Then I got access to an HP system with Rocky Mountain BASIC, which was a pretty sweet system. A few years later I got my first professional experience by working on the RM BASIC port to HP/UX as a tester. ~5 years later I came back to RMB working on a production test management system called Functional Test Manager, and I just had lunch with a guy I worked with on that a couple days ago.
BASIC was, I'm realizing as I write this, an integral part of my career. RIP Thomas.