M. Alicia Melgaard, linguist, World War II codebreaker and translator, and 20-year volunteer for the Dona Ana County Humane Society, died August 10 in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Founder of the DACHS neutering fund, Melgaard was also on the advisory board of the Foundation for Animal Protection, of Brookfield, Connecticut. “Alicia gave us credit for new ideas from our publications, lobbying, and obsession with spay/neuter,” FAP founder Mildred Lucas wrote, “but it was she who inspired us.” (1996)
Harald A. Rehder, 89, discoverer of more than 300 mollusk species, died November 10 in Washington D.C. On the staff of the Smithsonian Institution, 1932-1976, Rehder was curator of the division of mollusks, 1946-1965, and senior zoologist, 1965-1976. A founding member of the American Malacological Union, Rehder was AMU president in 1941. (1996)
Charmaine Stansfield, remembered by St. Francis of Assisi Animal Rescue, of Morgan Hill, California, as “a great friend to animals who donated both time and talent to SFAAR over the years, particularly while we were building our low-cost spay/neuter clinic,” died October 1. (1996)
Stephen Leatherwood, who with Randall R. Reeves co-edited the Sierra Club Handbook of Whales and Dolphins (1983 and updates), died January 25 of lymphoma. Formerly senior research biologist for the Hubbs Marine Research Institute, Leatherwood spent his last years with the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation in Hong Kong, as representative of the Cetacean Specialist Group within the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. His special project was seeking the survival of the baiji, or Chinese river dolphin. "There are no truly reliable numbers on the size of baiji populations," Leatherwood warned in November 1995. "Published estimates indicate a decline from 400 or so in the late 1970s, to 300 or so in the mid-1980s, to 120 or so in 1993. However, the first carefully planned and coordinated survey of the species' entire range, about 1,200 miles, from Shanghai to Yichang, employing a large vessel in mid-channel and one smaller vessel along each shore, resulted in sightings of only five baiji. Even accounting for animals missed, it is difficult to conclude that the population is more than a few dozen animals. This is not being taken passively," Leatherwood continued. "An eleventh hour effort is underway to capture as many of the remaining dolphins as possible and move them into Shi Shou Seminatural Reserve, a 24-square-mile oxbow of the Yangtze. There are no guarantees, but we are trying." The one dolphin at the reserve now is a male, who has been there for 18 years. In December 1995, after three years of trying, the baiji recovery team captured a second dolphin, a femalebut on June 23, 1996, she drowned in one of the nets that encloses the protected site. Looming over the whole question of baiji survival, meanwhile, is the impending construction of the Three Gorges Dam across the upper Yangtse, one of biggest engineering projects ever undertaken, with almost incalculable potential impact. "The line from Chinese scientists in 1987-1992," Leatherwood told ANIMAL PEOPLE, "was that it would damage 25% of the habitat and affect 10% to 30% of the population. Then, after the official resumption of construction and a series of official government meetings to evaluate the evidence, all Chinese scientists magically shifted to the view that the dam is no problem." One way or another," Leatherwood said, "The Yangtse has been sacrificed to development. It is only a matter of time before the baiji, the most visible symbol of loss, disappears from the fetid flow. Who knows what else will spin down the vortex?" (1997)
Paul E. Tsongas, 55, former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and Democratic presidential candidate in the 1992 primaries, died January 18 of cancer. Forced out of the 1992 presidential race by questions about his health, Tsongas left the Senate in 1984 during a battle with another form of cancer. As a lobbyist, Tsongas represented the Massachusetts SPCA, the Humane Society of the U.S, and the Sierra Club. "I think I can speak for research animals because I've been one for the past three years," Tsongas reportedly said at one point. "Even when the animals are informed about the procedure, and have given their consent, the animals are scared." Because of Tsongas' work on biomedical research issues, the Illinois Medical Society asked the medical and research professions to oppose his presidential candidacy. (1997)
Sue Royal, executive director of the White Mountain Humane Society in Pinetop, Arizona, died in December. (1996)
Judi Bari, 47, leader of the 1990 Earth First! "Redwood Summer" protests, died March 2 of cancer at her cabin in Willits, California. Born in Balitmore, Bari left studies at the University of Maryland circa 1969 to dedicate heself to anti-Vietnam War protest. Moving into labor organizing, she led a successful wildcat strike at a U.S. Postal Service bulk mail facility but failed in an attempt to unionize grocery store clerks. Relocating to northern California in 1979, Bari became a carpenterand became locally controversial for her pro-choice position on abortion. She joined Earth First! in 1987, upon learning the age of the tree that furnished some of the redwood siding she was installing on a house. Bari emerged as voice of the strongest faction within Earth First! after cofounder Dave Foreman was arrested in 1989 and eventually convicted on a plea bargain for conspiracy in connction with a plot apparently hatched chiefly by two FBI undercover operatives to blow up electrical transmission lines in rural Arizona. Under Foreman, formerly a mainstream hunter/conservationist, Earth First! was often perceived as tree-huggers opposing loggers. Bari, said longtime friend Anna Marie Stenberg, "made the connection between the exploitation of the forests and the exploitation of the workers." Convincing the California chapter of Earth First! to renounce tree-spiking, "She was successful in driving a wedge between the companies and the workers," Georgia-Pacific spokesperson Dave Odgers acknowledged in 1990. However, on May 24, 1990, as Bari and musician/activist Darryl Cherney drove through Oakland, California, on their way to Santa Cruz to drum up support for "Redwood Summer," a nail bomb detonated under the seat of Bari's car. Cherney escaped with minor injuries, but a shattered pelvis and lower back injuries left Bari permanently disabled. Although no evidence ever linked Bari and Cherney to the bomb, both were arrested within hours for allegedly possessing it. The charges were later dropped. Local media and private investigators eventually named three other potential suspects, who allegedly had histories of having threatened Bari, but no other arrests were made. A year later, Bari and Cherney sued the FBI for allegedly destroying evidence, misrepresenting the facts of the case to media, ignoring the death threats issued against Bari, and withholding evidence from the investigators representing Bari and Cherney. The case is still pending. Despite her injuries, Bari remained among the most visible Earth First! leaders until her death, as Foreman resigned in August 1990. A lifelong Republican, Foreman told media he was uncomfortable with Bari's "class-struggle, left/counterculture approach," and returned to mainstream lobbying. (1997)
Floy Mae Seales, wife of John Seales, longtime animal services director for Hot Springs, Arkansas, died February 9 of cancer. "In March 1978," John Seales recalled, "I expressed to my wife that I had just about had it up to my neck with the job," which he undertook after founding the first animal shelter in Vietnam some years earlier. "'This is the dirtiest job I have ever done,' I said. 'More complaints than I have ever heard, and the most thankless job in the world.' She looked at me and made a very soft statement: 'Why don't you try to make a difference?' That was the turning point of my career. Because of my wife, I was able to see things in a more positive way. As I look around my spacious office, and walk through our new modern animal shelter, which they named after me, I owe it to Floy Mae." (1997)
Daniel Pratt Mannix, 85, died January 29 in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Keeping a menagerie as a teenager that included porcupines, hawks, and vultures, Mannix became a traveling carnival performer after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, and went on to careers as a professional hunter and collector of wildlife for zoos and circuses, before writing more than two dozen books, including Backyard Zoo, All Creatures Great And Small (not to be confused with the James Herriot book of the same title), Tales of the African Frontier, and as his views on hunting shifted, The Fox And The Hound, which became a strongly anti-hunting 1981 Walt Disney animated film. (1997)
Edith Hurd, 86, died January 27 in Walnut Creek, California. Hurd was author/illustrator of more than 50 books for children, often collaborating with her late husband Clement, who died in 1988. Among her many animal-related titles were The Blue Heron Tree, The Mother Whale, and The Mother Deer. (1997)
Vero C. Wynne-Edwards, 90, died January 5 in Banchory, Scotland. Wynne-Edwards revolutionized human understanding of evolution with his 1962 book Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behavior, which argued that instead of operating solely through individual survival of the fittest, evolution also occurs as result of the self-regulatory mechanisms of whole species, manifested in territoriality, dominance hierarchies, and allocation of resources. Wynne-Edwards postulated that evolution often favors not the animal best able to survive alone, but rather the animal best adapted to survive within the social context of the kind. A 1927 graduate of the New College at Oxford, Wynne-Edwards taught zoology at McGill University in Montreal, 1930-1946, formulating his then-controversial theories while studying how seabird populations disperse at sea. He then served as Regius Professor of Natural History at Aberdeen University in Scotland, 1946-1974. Wynne-Edwards was elected to the Royal Society in 1970, received the Royal Society's Neill Prize in 1973, and capped his career by receiving the Frink Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 1980. (1997)
Joseph Kastner, 89, died February 6 (1997) at his home in Grandview-on-Hudson, New York. A writer and editor for Life magazine, 1936-1969, Kastner authored A Species of Eternity, a history of early North American nature study which was nominated for the 1977 National Book Award; A World of Watchers, a 1987 history of birdwatching in America; and the text for two anthologies of visual material from the New York Public Library collection, The Bird Illustrated, 1550-1900 (1989) and The Animal Illustrated, 1550-1900 (1991).
Beryl Reed, 76, who died in October 1996, left her cottage on the Thames and about $5,000 to fellow actor Paul Strike, 48, the London Times disclosed on February 4on condition that he care for the six survivors among her onetime colony of 13 cats. Reed described them in The Cat's Whiskers, a volume of her memoirs. "I arranged for her to get one of her cats from a Chinese restaurant because she didn't think he was happy. The others were strays who had been neglected or thrown out on the street and ended up at animal shelters," Strike said. Neighbor Edward Baty described Strike as "stupid about catshe just loves them."
Robert Dorsey, 71, described by Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Andy Wallace as “an irrepressible animal love whose favorite line to new acquaintances was that he worked in the biggest cathouse in town,” died March 4 in Philadelphia. A former cab driver, Dorsey took a job as an assistant laborer at the Philadelphia Zoo circa 1972, when the Yellow Cab drivers went on strike, cleaned reptile cages until promoted to assistant keeper, and then advanced again, becoming keeper of felines. Dorsey retired in 1987, but remained active on behalf of the zoo and the Pennsylvania SPCA. “His idea of a day out was to visit the SPCA, and he took us there countless times,” son Timothy Dorsey told Wallace.
Paula S. Andreder, American SPCA director of counseling services since 1992, died in November 1996 from breast cancer. According to the spring 1997 edition of the ASPCA publication Animal Watch, “Andreder was instrumental in working with fellow staff on the 1994-1995 Companion Animal Mourning Project, which offered original research into mourning behavior among pets who had experienced the death of another animal residing in the household.”
William Manning, vice president of the West Volusia Humane Society in Deland, Florida, died November 21.
Richard F. Marsh, 58, died on March 21 of cancer at home in Middleton, Wisconsin. A University of Wisconsin at Madison veterinary virologist, Marsh warned in 1986 after tracing the origins of a mink spongiform encephalopathy epidemic on Wisconsin fur farms that feeding the rendered remains of sheep or cattle to other sheep or cattle as a protein supplement could produce a similar brain disease––and that the then completely unknown transmission agent could not be sterilized out. The cattle industry denounced Marsh as an alarmist even as an epidemic of just such a disease, bovine spongiform encepalopathy, broke out in England. Marsh lobbied on for a ban on the use of ruminant renderings as animal feed. His position was vindicated; the USDA has now proposed such a ban, expected to take effect this summer.
Laura Nyro, 49, singer and songwriter whose “later songs exalted pacifism, feminism, and animal rights,” according to New York Times obituarist Stephen Holden, died of ovarian cancer on April 8 at her home in Danbury, Connecticut. Born Laura Nigro in Bronx, New York, the daughter of a jazz trumpeter, Nyro changed her name before making her professional folksinging debut at age 18 in San Francisco. Shouted off stage at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, she recovered to write her first of many hits for others within the year, and within another year produced Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, an autobiographical album Holden remembered as “unlike anything that had been heard in pop music,” which “laid the groundwork for a female-dominated genre of quirky, reflective songwriting that continues to this day.” (1997)
Paul Steel, 70, and his wife Beverly, 69, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, froze to death on March 5, Beverly’s birthday, after venturing off a cross-country ski trail in the Santa Fe National Forest to seek their temporarily missing keeshond. They told an attendant they were going to look for the dog; the attendant called rescuers to start a search after finding the dog guarding their car the next morning.
Sally Jones, 47, a chimpanzee shot, wounded, and captured in Africa as an infant circa 1950, died March 21 at the Fund for Animals’ Black Beauty Ranch in Texas. Sterile because of her gunshot wounds, she walked upright, performed ballet steps, and bicycled in circuses until 1970. Acquired by the Institute for Primate Studies in Norman, Oklahoma, where she met her longtime companion Nim Chimpsky, she participated in behavioral and cognitive research at the University of Oklahoma for the next 13 years. Sally and Nim came to Black Beauty in 1982, after the sale of the rest of their colony to the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates, at New York University. One of the oldest chimps in the U.S., Sally had suffered from diabetes since 1993. “She will be fondly missed,” said Black Beauty manager Chris Byrne. (1997)
Count Maurice Rudolph Coreth von und zu Coredo und Starkenberg, 67, identified by both The London Times and The New York Times in closely parallel obituaries as “a charming raconteur” who “mastered the persuasive art of fundraising,” after starting an organization called Rhino Rescue, died February 11 in England. Reputedly trying to join the British cavalry at age 10, at the outset of World War II, the Austrian-born Coreth “rode to hounds with the York and Ainsty and at the age of 21, became Master of the Wilton,” said The London Times, meaning he bore much of the cost of maintaining the hunt. “He was also a skilled showjumper and a courageous steeplechaser,” The London Times continued, “and later in life he was to win the Kenya Grand National.” Becoming an avid trophy hunter on a visit to Sierra Leone, Coreth “was proud to be the first private sport hunter invited to become an honorary member of the East African Professional Hunters’ Association,” The London Times added. After farming in Kenya, 1954-1963, and spending some years as a yachtsman, Coreth in 1985 “attended a meeting of the Shikar Club, a group of former African and Indian hunters living in Britain,” the Associated Press said, “and listened to a speech about the number of rhinos killed by poaching. A year later Mr. Coreth founded Rhino Rescue.” Asserted the London Times, “Combining single-minded dedication to the cause with winning charm and energetic fundraising, Coreth focused world attention on the plight of the black rhino. If the black rhino has a future it will be more due to Coreth than almost anyone else.” But according to the London Telegraph of June 3, 1996, the first Kenyan rhino sanctuary, the Solio Ranch, was begun in 1966, while Anna Merz founded the noted Ngare Sergoi Rhino Sanctuary in 1983, using her own money. The latter reputedly inspired eight other sanctuaries; it is possible Coreth was associated with one of them. Newsday on April 19, 1988 reported the February 1988 formation of the Rhino Rescue Fund by Kenyan zoologist David Western, now director of Kenya Wildlife Services. The Platinum Wildlife Foundation, sponsored by Platinum Technology, of Lombard, Illinois, advertised support of a Black Rhino Rescue project in 1992 and 1995. Otherwise, an extensive search of the World Wide Web and ANIMAL PEOPLE archives, including New York Times rhino-related coverage, 1988-present, found nothing to confirm the obituary claims. The London Times concluded that, “At the time of his death, Coreth was embarking on a project to save the tiger and the one-horned rhino in India, a task which his son Mark now hopes to fulfill.” (1997)
Peter Charles Stewart, 41, of Balboa, California, winner of a Genesis Commendation from the Ark Trust for his Endangered Species Mural series, died February 6. Stewart actively supported the Ark Trust, Orange County People for Animals, the Earth Angel Parrot Sanctuary, the Fund for Wild Nature, the Rainforest Action Network, and the Orangutan Foundation, according to OCPA president Ava Park, who was also his business manager during his last year of life. “Peter leaves behind his well-known companion, the blue-fronted Amazon parrot Jack, who accompanied Peter everywhere on his shoulder,” Park remembered. Jack was adopted by Lorin Lindner of the Earth Angel Parrot Sanctuary.
Lew Dietz, 90, died on April 27 in Rockport, Maine. After unsuccessful careers as a would-be Paris-based foreign correspondent in the 1920s and New York advertising copywriter in the 1930s, Dietz in midlife became a popular author of magazine features about hunting, fishing, and trapping, and authored the five-volume “Jeff White” action/adventure series around hunting, fishing, and trapping themes during the 1950s. Dietz enjoyed his greatest success, however, when in 1975 he teamed with his longtime friend Harry Goodridge, the Rockport harbormaster, to coauthor A Seal Called Andre, about the successful rescue and rehabilitation of a young harbor seal who was orphaned by a fishnet. Although Andre learned to survive in the wild, he returned to Rockport annually for 15 years to spend his summers clowning for tourists at the Rockport docks. The book eventually inspired the 1995 Paramount film Andre, which conveys an anti-hunting message. (1997)
Joan DeWind, 82, a founding member of the Xerces Society, died on April 27 at her home in Sherman, Connecticut, of complications from childhood polio. A psychiatric social worker by profession, DeWind was by avocation among the world’s leading experts on sphinx moths, a consulting volunteer to the American Museum of Natural History, a designer of butterfly gardens, and founder of the Naromi Land Trust.
Lesley Scott-Ordish, 62, founder of the British organizations Pro Dogs and Pets As Therapy, died of cancer on March 26, one day after her birthday. Pro Dogs, begun in 1976, annually honors heroic dogs, funds research into canine diseases, provides bereavement counselling, and lobbies for humane treatment of dogs. In 1982, Scott-Ordish helped start a second organization, Dogs For The Deaf, and then began Pets As Therapy a year later, upon discovering the loneliness of elderly persons who were deprived of their pets upon entering nursing homes. Scott-Ordish bred English setters, to which “she herself bore a resemblance,” according to The London Times, and was author of Cocker Spaniels: An Owner’s Guide, published in 1996. (1997)
Jacques Cousteau, 87, died June 25. Often ill as a child, Cousteau swam for his health near his home in St. Andre de Cubzac, France. He first dived in 1920 on a visit to Lake Harvey, Vermont, but only began diving in earnest after a 1936 car crash forced him to leave the French Naval Academy flight school. With engineer Emile Gagnan, Cousteau in 1943 invented the aqualung and took up underwater filming, earning the French Legion of Honor for anti-Nazi espionage.In 1950 Cousteau bought the minesweeper Calypso and re-equipped it as a floating film and TV studio.
The screen edition of his first book, The Silent World (1953), won the Grand Prize at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival and his first of three Academy Awards. Cousteau initially touted the oceans’ economic potential, but reinvented himself as the world’s most prominent and popular ecological crusader in The Living Sea (1963) and World Without Sun (1965), along with the ABC specials, The World of Jacques Cousteau (1966) and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (1968). “The only creatures on Earth who have bigger and maybe better brains than humans are the Cetacea, the whales and dolphins,” Cousteau often repeated, sparking the “save the whales” movement. “Perhaps they could one day tell us something important, but it is unlikely that we will hear it, because we are coldly, efficiently and economically killing them off.” As whale-saving grew into earth-saving, Cousteau spoke out against the nuclear arms race, noted often that human population had quintupled within his lifetime, and encouraged population planning but warned fellow anti-population crusaders that becoming involved in the abortion issue would be suicidal. Forming the Cousteau Society, based in Norfolk, Virginia, Cousteau and company won 40 Emmy nominations for their PBS series Cousteau Odyssey (1977) and Turner Broadcasting System series, Cousteau Amazon (1984). In part due to his own success in raising appreciation of the sacredness of life, Cousteau took hits from the animal rights movement in later years over aspects of his early work, “We’ve learned since then,” Cousteau acknowledged in a 1986 interview with Louise B. Parks of the Houston Chronicle. “It’s horrifying when I see what we used to do. We didn’t know better. We used to chase whales. Now when we spot the whales, we stop and wait for them to come to us. But we were learning. As we learned, we helped create the legislation that tells people how to behave toward mammals in the sea. If you look at the law today and our shows 15 years ago, we would go to jail.” Denouncing the capture of cetaceans for exhibit, Cousteau in 1991 opened the Paris-based Parc Oceanique Cousteau, the world’s first high-tech oceanarium without animals, but by 1994 it was out of business, partly because rapid advances in technology had already rendered much of it obsolete. Cousteau’s later years were saddened by the 1979 death of eldest son Philippe in a seaplane crash, the 1990 death of first wife Simone Melchior, and a bitter lawsuit against second son Jean-Michel, 57, over use of the Cousteau name in connection with a Fijian resort. Cousteau also had two children, Diane, 16, and Pierre-Yves, 14, with his second wife, France Triplet.
George Wald, 90, Harvard biologist who won the 1967 Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering the biochemical reactions that produce vision, died April 12 in Cambridge, Massachsetts. A longtime advisor to the Farm Animal Reform Movement, Wald was “deeply involved in a number of social issues, including peace, nuclear power, and child and animal welfare,” according to FARM president Alex Hershaft. (1997)
Gloria Blevins, 72, longtime adoption counselor for the San Diego County Department of Animal Control, who died in April, was memorialized in June by an anonymous gift of $100,000 to the shelter. “Gloria had a passion for saving all the animals she could, and in the end that number reached into the thousands,” SDC/DAC director Hector Cazares told media. Cazares said the donor “is a strong supporter of this department and sees this as seed money to attract other donors, which would enable us to make significant capital improvements.”
U.S. District Judge Charles R. Richey, 73, died of cancer on March 20, nine days short of six years after issuing perhaps his most controversial decision, which held that contrary to implementing regulations issued by the USDA, Congress meant the 1985 Improved Standards for Laboratory Animals Act to apply to mice, rats, and birds, who are the animals most commonly used in biomedical research, as well as to primates, dogs, and other species. The verdict was later reversed on grounds the plaintiffs, Animal Legal Defense Fund and three individuals, had no standing to bring the case. The 1985 Act still isn’t fully implemented. On October 29, 1996, Richey issued a similar verdict, again on behalf of ALDF, this time striking down so-called “performance standards” set by the USDA in lieu of firm definitions. Performance standards, Richey pointed out, have historically proved unenforceable. This verdict too may be reversed on the standing issue, as Richey was notably more inclined to recognize the standing of advocacy groups to sue on behalf of animals than any other federal judge. Appointed to the federal bench by former President Richard Nixon in 1971, Richey within less than two years presided over the first of the Watergate cases to go to trial. He was remembered in syndicated obituaries for verdicts that “advanced the rights of women but curtailed the powers of presidents,” but the Animal Welfare Institute argued in a special appreciation that he will be remembered longest “for his magnificent series of landmark decisions for the protection of animals,” also including an order to the National Marine Fisheries Service to enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act to prevent U.S. boats from netting tuna “on dolphin.” Commenced one of Richey’s AWA verdicts, “At the outset, the Court shall state the following: This case involves animals, a subject that should be of great importance to all mankind.” (1997)
William Collins, 67, father of Timothy Collins, the newly elected Member of Parliament for Westmorland and Lonsdale, died May 24 when he tried to pull his Labrador retriever from a pond that unknown to him had been electrified by a faulty pump, and was himself electrocuted. Collins owned and ran the Hobbs Cross equestrian center. (1997)
Hans Suskind, 90, Holocaust survivor and cat rescuer, died May 17 in Okeechobee, Florida, leaving most of his $250,000 estate to the Okeechobee Rehabilitative Center for use in cat care. “Suskind had no family,” the Miami Herald remembered. “He fled Germany and Hollard before ending up in Indianapolis, where he was a door-to-door salesman and kept a cat. After he retired to Okeechobee, his cat died. But he got another, who started a small colony of felines on the bank of a canal where Suskind lived. When he could no longer care for himself and his cats, Suskind entered a nursing home. While he was there, a woman who cared for his property called animal control and had the cats picked up. They were put to sleep at the Okeechobee Rehabilitative Center.” (1997)
Christina Bauer, 87, artist and jeweler, of Keene, New Hampshire, died in February 1996, noted for longtime service to the Monadnock Humane Society as a volunteer, board member, and frequent donor of paintings, auctioned to raise funds. Her biggest gift, however, her $111,000 estate, was only disclosed on May 1, 1997. (1997)
Juan Alvarez, 19, a park worker in Yakima, Washington, drowned on May 31 while trying to rescue a duck who had become tangled in fishing line at the children’s fishing pond in Sportsman Park. (1997)
Richard A. Baker, 18, of St. Peters, Missouri, was electrocuted on June 6, the day after he graduated from high school as class president, when he lifted a 30-foot aluminum irrigation pipe to free a rabbit who had become trapped inside and one end of it touched a power line. (1997)
Mary McCarthy Dotts, 91, manager of the Delaware County SPCA for 50 years, assisted by her late husband Horace T. Dotts, died June 17 in Media, Pennsylvania. Horace Dotts died in 1976. (1997)
Joanne Boyle, 42, of Quincy, California, was killed by an automobile as she crossed the road on March 21, while traveling in Nevada. From her late teens and for 10 years thereafter, Boyle worked for the late Pegeen Fitzgerald’s Vivisection Investigation League. On her own, Boyle promoted cat adoptions. Beginning in the summer of 1975, Boyle was an enthusiastic participant in the 18-month campaign which stopped the American Museum of Natural History’s cat sex experiments––the first major victory over vivisection in the modern history of the animal rights movement. Boyle created some of the most imaginative posters and was an active demonstrator. She was both committed and creative, and a good friend, missed by all whom she touched. ––Henry Spira (1998)
John Fletcher, 78, of St. Paul, Minnesota, first director of the Como Zoo, died on April 2 of leukemia, barely a month after the death of his wife Valata. Previously senior groundskeeper at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Fletcher was hired to revitalize the Como Zoo in 1957. Recalled the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Fletcher introduced attractions such as Sparky the Seal, a showoff sea lion who performed on cue,” in a manner now generally considered inappropriate for zoos. But under Fletcher the Como Zoo also presaged the current zoo emphasis on conservation, as reputedly the first North American zoo to raise abandoned Siberian tiger cubs, and “pioneered the exchange of zoo animals for breeding,” the Star Tribune added. The Star Tribune credited Fletcher for “springing animals from cramped cages to more natural surroundings“ in renovations undertaken to keep up with the much larger Minnesota Zoo, which opened in 1978. Fletcher retired in 1985. (1998)
Lesley Sinclair, 78, founder of the Animal Care Sanctuary in East Smithfield, Pennsylvania, not related to the veterinarian of the same name who works for the Humane Society of the U.S., died on March 30. Born in London, England, Sinclair came to the U.S. in 1941. She began the Animal Care Sanctuary in 1967 in Tom’s River, New Jersey, after a long career in New York City as an interior decorator, and moved it to rural Pennsylvania in 1982. “I have for a long time known that the multi-millionaire animal organizations do nothing much,” she wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1992. “I am not surprised. The wealth of the animal world has bonded together for their own benefit, not for that of the animals in need of help.” Of her own sanctuary, she added, “We have over 500 cats here, 145 dogs, and a pet pig, Sally, and feed the wildlife. I do not believe in killing.” (1998)
Bessie Bengston Dower, 95, of Portland, Connecticut, died on January 31. A retired teacher, Dower “was a member of many animal protection organizations, and was active in the Valley Shore Animal Welfare Society and Protectors of Animals in Glastonbury, Connecticut, into her nineties,” remembered Mildred Lucas of the Foundation for Animal Protection.
Louie Jelicich, 83, a Sacramento animal control officer from 1944 to 1974, died of cancer in Sacramento on March 30. The Sacramento Bee recalled his public arguments that dogs are by nature much better behaved than many of their owners. (1998)
Leo K. Bustad, DVM, 78, died from pneumonia on September 19 in Pullman, Washington. Born in Stanwood, Washington, Bustad earned a B.A. in agriculture at Washington State University in Pullman in 1941, and on the same day became a lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He married Signe Byrd, a WSU classmate, in June 1942 at Fort Benning, Georgia, shortly before shipping out to fight in Italy and Germany. Captured by the Nazis, Bustad spent 15 months at a German-run prison camp in Poland. Reunited in June 1945, Bustad and Byrd thereafter remained together until her death in March 1998. Postwar, Bustad returned to WSU to earn an M.A. in animal nutrition (1948) and his DVM (1949). From 1948 until 1965, Bustad did invasive radiation research on animals at the Hanford National Laboratory, often collaborating with faculty of the University of California at Davis. Bustad himself headed the radiobiology and comparative oncology labs at U.C. Davis from mid-1965 until 1973, helping direct work involving as many as 1,200 beagles at an off-campus location now listed as a top-priority Superfund toxic waste cleanup site. The experiments ended in 1986, when the last beagle died. The dogs' radioactive remains were removed to Hanford in 1990. Rheem Araj, a beagle care technician 1972-1973, alleged in a 1994 lawsuit while fighting a life-threatening lymphoma that news coverage of the carcass removal was the first word she received that she might have been extensively exposed to radiation. Araj further alleged that the radiation was responsible for her cancer. From 1973 until 1983, Bustad served as dean of the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine. Upon retirement, he became president of the Delta Society, founded in 1976 by Michael J. McCulloch, a psychiatrist in Portland, Oregon, who pioneered the use of animal-assisted therapy. Keeping his main office at WSU, as dean emeritus and professor emeritus of veterinary physiology, Bustad moved the Delta Society to Renton, Washington, where it maintains the National Service Dog Center and carries out other programs on behalf of service dog users and pet keepers. Recipient of various humanitarian awards late in life, Bustad wrote two books, Animals, Aging, and the Aged (1980) and Compassion: Our Last Great Hope (1990), as well as co-authoring Learning and Living Together: Building the Human-Animal Bond. (1998)
Helen Altfillisch, 71, remembered by Associated Press writer Chet Brokaw for hosting "probably the last privately owned herd of wild horses in South Dakota" on her 8,000-acre beef ranch, died in May while trying to pull a mired colt from silt behind a stock dam. Meade County sheriff's deputy John Rhoden and colleagues found her remains, and those of of the colt, surrounded by "an honor guard of animals--wild horses, prairie dogs, and a coyote," Brokaw wrote, covering the October roundup of the 300-odd horses for auction to pay liens on the Altfillisch estate. "Miss Alfillisch's friends and relatives had worried that most of her horses might be sold tor slaughter," Brokaw reported, "but many were bought by companies that supply bucking stock for rodeos. Local ranchers also bought a lot of the animals." (1998)
Alice Stacy, 99, died on October 26 at home in Boston. Stacy was remembered for resisting relocation by a developer in June 1988 because she wasn't allowed to take her Afghan hound Goodboy with her--whom she had rescued from local drug dealers. Goodboy died suddenly from stress, before TV cameras, as authorities came to evict her. In August 1988, the Boston city council passed "The Goodboy Law," guaranteeing senior citizens in public housing the right to keep their pets. (1998)
Lim Cheng Choon, 59, was shotgunned by a Singapore Primary Production Department dog-killer on November 2 as he knelt between two strays to feed and pet them. Lim's brother, retired Environment Ministry employee Lim Cheng Khoon, 68, told The Straits times that his family hadn't seen the victim in 20 years, but had "heard he was looking after the abandoned dogs in the vacated villages in Pungol," apparently supporting himself with odd jobs. A sister who underwrote his work died in 1996. Lim was the second human victim of the dog-killers in recent years: retired bus conductor Ong Kim Tor, 71, survived a September 1996 shooting. Trained by the Singapore Police Academy, the PPD dog-killers are supposed to shoot only dogs they cannot snare with catchpoles. Each killer is accompanied by three people who are supposed to warn people and vehicles away. "All shooting has been suspended, and procedures for the use of firearms will be reviewed," the PPD said. (1998)
Ryan Ferris, 14, of Delco, Pennsylvania, alerted his mother Roberta, 50, brother Matthew, 18, and sister, Bridget, 12, to a pre-dawn housefire on November 6, and helped them escape by leaping from a second-floor window, but was killed by burns and smoke inhalation while trying to carry two cats down from the third floor. The cats were also killed. Matthew Ferris is reportedly in critical condition. The two family dogs got out alive. (1998)
George Eric Hansen, 50, died September 22 of an apparent heart attack while hiking with his wife of 27 years, Rose Marie Gaines, in Nevada County, California. Said Sacramento environmental consultant Jude Lamar, "Snakes don't have a lot of friends, but Hansen was a dedicated friend. He was a rarity: a biologist with backbone." Hansen in 1997 was named environmentalist of the year by the Environmental Council of Sacramento for his work to protect the giant garter snake. (1998)
Suzanne Barthell, 62, died from cancer on October 13 in San Francisco. A social worker and therapist for 30 years in the San Francisco school district, Barthell and her daughter Adrienne Forstner-Barthell became San Francisco Zoo volunteers in 1984. Later appointed to the San Francisco Zoo Advisory Committee, Barthell fought the 1993 turnover of zoo management to the privately funded San Francisco Zoological Society, and opposed bond issues for improvements which she claimed were too extravagant. "Her loss means one less independent voice--one less person who put animals and people ahead of corporate interests," fellow San Francisco activist Jeff Sheehy told Savannah Blackwell of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. (1998)
Jonathan Levin, 31, was memorialized on October 24 by the dedication of the Jonathan & Julius Playroom for dogs at the new Bide-A-Wee Golden Years Retirement Home in Westhampton, New York--a pet hospice which already has a waiting list of 2,000 applicants ready to pay $10,000 per animal to assure lifetime care for their pets after their own passing. Levin, an English teacher at the William H. Taft High School in the Bronx, son of Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin, was killed by a burglar on May 30. (1998)
Tammy Martinez, 27, of Clifton, Colorado, was struck by two vehicles and killed on October 7 just after dusk, while attempting to rescue a dog who had been hit by a previous vehicle. The dog was also killed. (1998)
Travis Yonkers, 9, whose dog alerted him to a 1997 housefire in time to save the family, was killed on August 15 while trying to save the
dog from a 3 a.m. fire in the same house, owned by his grandparents, Robert and Linda Homan, of Mio, Michigan. Awakened by a smoke alarm, Yonkers woke his grandmother and his mentally disabled older brother, enabling them to escape, and instructed the brother to summon help, before returning inside to seek the dog. (2000)
Mark Garrat Shea, 11, of Baltimore, was killed on July 19 at the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana by a hyena who entered his tent through unsecured flaps. Shea and his mother, who was reportedly still in extreme mental distress three weeks later, were in their third week on safari tour in Zimbabwe and Botswana. (2000)
