Robert P. Wagers, DVM, 86, died on August 14 in Westminster, Maryland. While in the Army veterinary corps during World War II and
immediately afterward, Wagers treated the animals used in the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests and in poison gas experiments at the Edgewood Arsenal. Thereafter, he served as Baltimore Zoo staff vet from 1949 into the early 1960s, and for more than 50 years treated the animals at local humane societies, often as a volunteer. (2000)
Laura Rogers, 36, who helped to fund antifur bilboards in Detroit, died from a drug overdose on January 15 in Royal Oak, Michigan. Fellow activists took in her 11 cats, three chinchillas, a raccoon, and a rescued sparrow. Rogers was a Metro Detroit Vegetarians board member, and had served on the boards of two other local activist groups: Animals Deserve Adequate Protection Today & Tomorrow and Humanitarians for Animal Rights Education (now defunct). (2001)
Sam Savitt, 83, noted for paintings and drawings of horses,including as author of 15 books written mostly for children, and illustrator of about 150 more, died on December 25 in North Salem, New York. (2000)
William L. Brisby, 76, died on January 1 in Crescent City, California. A former U.S. Navy dolphin trainer, Brisby founded the Exotic Animal Training and Management Program at Moorpark College in 1974. The program annually selected 60 of about 1,000 applicants to manage a zoo holding about 500 animals of 140 species. Brisby later was a trainer for the early 1980s TV show Those Amazing Animals. (2001)
Jack Pulis, 70, of Gardiner, Maine, died in Augusta on January 6, having lapsed into a coma during December 4 heart surgery. A retired Bell Telephone Laboratories technician who had worked on the Telestar satellite, Jack Pulis "was a kind and gentle man, with a boundless compassion for all victims of violence, injustice, cruelty, and intolerance," recalled the Kennebec Journal. He is survived by his wife, noted Maine animal rights activist Linn Pulis. (2001)
Dennis Puleston, 95, founding chair of the Environmental Defense Fund, died on June 8 at his home in Brookhaven, New York. Born in Britain, Puleston was already "an avid naturalist and skilled painter of birds" according to New York Times obituarist Paul Lewis, when he sailed a small boat to the U.S. in 1931 with a friend. He sailed on to China by 1937, before the outbreak of World War II forced his return to Britain. His 1939 marriage to Betty Wellington of New York sent him back to the U.S. as a permanent resident. In 1942 Puleston helped to design the "Duck" amphibious landing craft, then trained Allied Forces to use it. Puleston personally participated in amphibious operations in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and Burma; trained the D-Day "Duck" drivers in Britain after recovering from a spinal wound; and joined in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. For his "Duck" work, Puleston was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1948 by President Harry S. Truman. The same year, while working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Puleston began a longterm study of the ospreys of Gardiners Island, off eastern Long Island. "By the early 1960s," wrote Lewis, "he had concluded that the ospreys were dying out as a result of DDT sprayed to keep down mosquitos. In 1966, four years after the publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, Puleston and several colleagues won a lawsuit against the Suffolk County Mosquito Control Department and secured a year-long ban on DDT spraying." Puleston et al incorporated EDF in 1967 to follow up with national advocacy. By the time Puleston left the chair, in 1972, DDT was banned nationwide. He spent the last three decades of his life developing the ecotourism industry as a lecturer and guide, leading 35 expeditions to Antarctica. (2001)
Vernon W. Evans Jr., 81, of Lutz, Florida, died in June at a Tampa nursing home after a long fight with Parkinson's disease. "He was the judge who ended the use of pound dogs and cats in medical research in Florida," remembered Birusk Tugan of the Tampa Tribune. "'Taking a live, healthy animal, subjecting it to surgical intervention, and then keeping it alive afterward--calling this humane is almost blasphemy,' Evans ruled in December 1986 when he stopped Hillsborough County from selling pound dogs and cats to the University of South Florida. 'Humane has a meaning,' Evans said. 'It doesn't have one meaning for four-legged animals and another for two-legged animals.'" (2001)
Victor G. Koppleberger, 83, died on June 14 at his home in Medina, Ohio. A humane officer, wildlife rehabilitator, and naturalist for more than 30 years, Kopple-berger was previously a hunter. Recalled Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Donna Robb, who profiled Koppleberger for ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1993, "One night he had a vivid dream in which he stood for judgement before every animal he had ever killed. He said the dream was so powerful that from that day he devoted his life to helping animals." (2001)
Charles Schreiner III, 74, of Mountain Home, Texas, died of congestive heart failure on April 22. As heir to his grandfather's Y.O. Ranch, Schreiner began trying to preserve the Texas longhorn cattle lineage in 1957, when there may have been fewer than 1,000 authentic longhorns left, and founded the Texas Longhorn Breeders' Association of America in 1964. There are now about 250,000 longhorns on U.S. ranches. Schreiner also "led a movement to raise exotic animals from Africa and Asia on Texas ranches and charge hunters to shoot them," recalled Douglas Martin of The New York Times, which made Schreiner more-or-less the inventor of the "canned hunt." (2001)
Gunther Gebel-Williams, 66, died on July 19 from cancer, at home in Venice, Florida. Born in Germany as Gunther Gebel in 1934, Gebel-Williams was the son of a circus seamstress and a theatrical set builder who resisted the Nazis even after being drafted into the Wehrmacht. Gebel-Williams' mother got him a job with the Harry Williams circus at age 13; he later took Williams' surname as a gesture of appreciation. Gebel-Williams trained horses, elephants, tigers, and leopards for Williams until 1968, when Ringling Brothers bought the Williams circus to acquire his skills. Recalled New York Times obituarist Richard Severo, "Gebel-Williams was the principal heir-apparent to the tradition of Clyde Beatty, who dominated the U.S. circus scene in the mid-20th century by walking into cages filled with huge cats armed with a chair, a whip, and sometimes a revolver. Gebel-Williams had no use for chairs or pistols or anything else that would threaten or injure his animals. Only 5'4", he used his voice and bits of meat to make sure they understood when he was pleased." Injured by animals many times, Gebel-Williams gave more than 12,000 performances without ever missing a call or allowing any of his animals to be killed for their deeds. "If you do right by animals," he said, "and do not become careless, they will do the right thing in return. One can never be so certain about people." He kept the pelts of his favorite animals on the floor of his home, but did not allow anyone to step on them. "We walk around them out of respect," he explained, "because they are not trophies but dear old friends." He last performed in 1998. (2001)
Ronald Rood, 81, died on July 16 at home in Lincoln, Vermont. A retired high school and college biology teacher, Rood wrote more than two dozen books about nature, initially inspired by finding a turtle at large on a wintery New England day at age seven. Rood wrote a letter about it to Thornton Burgess, the author of many stories about Bobby Coon, Buster Bear, Grand-father Frog, Jerry Muskrat, Johnny Chuck, Old Man Coyote, Reddy Fox, Unc' Billy Possum, and Peter Cottontail. Burgess responded with a two-page letter. Recalled Rood in 1975, "I figured if that was what a nature writer was, someone who took time to write to little kids, I wanted to be one too." Locally known as a wildlife rescuer, rehabilitator, and remover of skunks from basements, Rood had his first big success in 1967 with Hundred Acre Welcome: The Story of a Chincoteague Pony, about how he, his wife, and their four children impulsively bought a wild pony in Virginia, whom they brought home to Lincoln in their station wagon. (2001)
Joe Don Stovall, 46, of Baytown, Texas, escaped a July 30 mobile home fire with his wife Mary "Kitty" Hernandez, but died from smoke inhalation when he ran back inside to try to save his two cats. One was found dead; the other is missing. (2001)
Dorothy Checci-O'Brien, 70, died on August 27 at home in Plymouth, Massachusetts. A longtime valuable news source for ANIMAL PEOPLE, Checci-O'Brien stood under five feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds, but was fined $405 in October 1985 for allegedly beating up two hunters she caught trying to shoot waterfowl near her house despite her "No Hunting" signs. Considered the most effective pro-animal lobbyist in Massachusetts, working strictly as a volunteer, Checci-O'Brien earlier led a long and eventually successful effort to wrest the Ellen Gifford Sheltering Home for Cats in Brighton from the allegedly self-aggrandizing control of corporate attorney John G. Kilpatrick Jr., and closely monitored the financial affairs of the Massachusetts SPCA and the Animal Rescue League of Boston. New England Anti-Vivisection Society president Theo Capaldo called Checci-O'Brien "the mother of animal activism in Massachusetts." Friends of the Plymouth Pound held a memorial celebration of her life on September 29. (2001)
Fred Neil, 64, died of cancer on July 7 at home in Summerland Key, Florida. A master of the 12-string guitar, Neil wrote "Everybody's Talkin'", made famous by Harry Nilsson as theme song for the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, and wrote other hits including "A Little Bit of Rain," "Other Side of This Life," "The Dolphins," and "Ba-De-Da," but lost interest in music after cofounding The Dolphin Project in 1970 with Ric O'Barry, and last performed in 1977. Neil arranged benefit concerts for The Dolphin Project by Jimmy Buffett, David Crosby and Stephen Stills, Dion, Phil Everly, Richie Havens, Joni Mitchell, John Sebastian, and Jerry Jeff Walker. "Fred was my best friend," said O'Barry, who was in Guatemala returning two ex-traveling show dolphins to the wild when Neil passed away. (2001)
Vicki Hearne, 55, died on August 21 of lung cancer at a hospice in Branford, Connecticut, near her home in Westbrook. Born in Austin, Texas, Hearne became a self-employed animal trainer at age 21, but taught English and creative writing from 1969 to 1995 at the University of California/ Riverside, Stanford, and Yale. In addition to her successful 1986 volume Adam's Task: Calling Animals By Name, about animal intelligence, Hearne wrote five other books on animal themes, including Bandit: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog, which was turned into the film documentary A Little Vicious. She became best known as a strident advocate of pit bull terriers and critic of the animal rights movement, especially in two essays for Harper's Magazine, "What's Wrong With Animal Rights?" (1991) and "Can An Ape Tell A Joke?" (1993), which defended the Las Vegas orangutan trainer Bobby Berosini. (2001)
Vincent Lowe, 49, of Brooksville, Florida, owner of Florida Cougar Inc. with Lesa Lucas, was fatally mauled on July 31 at Savage Kingdom, a tiger facility owned since 1971 by Robert Baudy, 79, whose tiger acts were often featured on The Ed Sullivan Show. Experienced with their five pumas but not familiar with tigers, Lowe and Lucas accidently put a tiger named Tie into an adjacent cage with a hole in the fence while attempting to repair Tie's cage. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission reported that Lowe "ignored a park manager who asked him not to attempt repairs until he was present, should have left the cage rather than trying to calm the tiger by striking his cage with a crowbar, and presented himself as prey when he knelt to make the repairs." As the tiger came through the hole, Lowe and Lucas tried to hold him back with a board. He got through after Lowe sent Lucas to fetch Baudy, who shot Tie, too late to save Lowe. (2001)
Mitzi Leibst, 62, died on August 12 in Seattle. A retired Army officer, Leibst and longtime friend Hilde Wilson were noted animal rescuers, feral cat colony tenders, and critics of the Seattle Animal Control Board. Leibst was also active with the Northwest Animal Rights Network and Margaret Kyros Foundation for Animals. (2001)
Linda Cherney, 47, died on August 11 in Norwich, New York, after an 8-year battle with multiple sclerosis. Cher-ney and Bob Blake, her companion of 22 years, started the Beingkind animal rescue society in New York City in 1987. With volunteers, they rehomed an estimated 8,000 animals before moving upstate in 1999, to have more room for animals. "They were a fixture at street fairs and on the Upper West Side, setting up their tent to find homes for animals," recalled friend Elizabeth Forel. (2001)
Bob Martwick, 75, died in Lombard, Illinois, on August 26 from pulmonary fibrosis. Martwick ran a kennel and bred dogs in the 1950s, but by 1960 mostly trained animals to perform in TV commercials. He rescued his first big star, Morris I, from a Chicago shelter just before the personable orange tom was to be killed. Morris I made 58 commercials for 9 Lives cat food between 1969 and his death at age 19 in 1978; was featured in two books; was reputed model for the cartoon cat Garfield, drawn by Jim Davis; and traveled 200,000 miles making appearances. His successor, Morris II, came from a Massachusetts shelter. Altogether, Martwick traveled with the two cats for 27 years. Martwick also helped discover and train Spuds MacKenzie, the bull terrier who sold beer for Anheuser-Busch. (2001)
Carolyn E. Stebe, 68, died on August 20 from a heart attack in New Albany, Indiana. A marionette performer on Long Island during the 1960s, Stebe was impressed by parrot acts at Disney World and turned to teaching hens to roller skate--an act eventually featured on MTV. She retired from New York to New Albany in 1998, but continued to give frequent free shows with her hens at retirement homes. (2001)
Robert F. Willson, DVM, 90, died on August 2 in Detroit from congestive heart failure. Willson was chief veterinarian for the Detroit pound during the 1940s and 1950s, then served as director of the Detroit Zoo from 1968 until 1975. After retirement he volunteered at the zoo until 1987. (2001)
Robert Edward Steele III, 81, was killed on September 11 in Sanibel, Florida, apparently while trying to kick an 11-foot alligator away from his dog. The dog survived. Ironically, Steele and his wife Ellen "were trying very hard to protect the alligators in this area," recalled Art Weiss-bach, who volunteered with Steele for the Sanibel/Captiva Conservation Foundation. (2001)
John C. Lilly, 86, died September 30 (2001) in Los Angeles. After researching the physiology of high-altitude flight during World War II, Lilly did investigations preliminary to space travel, inventing the isolation tank in 1954 to simulate weightlessness. Seeking to explore methods of communicating with aliens, Lilly founded the Communi-cation Research Institute on St. Thomas to study dolphins as aliens-surrogate, and became a frequent visitor to the Miami Seaquarium, where he profoundly influenced apprentice trainer Rick Feldman, known since 1970 as dolphin freedom advocate Ric O'Barry. A chapter of O'Barry's 1988 autobiography Behind The Dolphin Smile is titled "The Lilly Factor." At first awed by Lilly's discoveries about dolphin intelligence, O'Barry later developed deep misgivings about his use of vivisection. After O'Barry began releasing dolphins, they went different ways. Lilly wrote 19 books, including Man and Dolphin and The Mind of the Dolphin, claimed he could understand dolphin language while on LSD, and promoted the notion of humans and cetaceans enjoying a spiritual bond. His work inspired the films The Day of the Dolphin (1973), Altered States (1980), and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).
Ron Blakely, 69, founding director of the Sedgewick County Zoo in Wichita, died at home of natural causes on October 2. Recalled Lori O'Toole Buselt of the Wichita Eagle, "Blakely, nicknamed Mr. Zoo, came to Wichita in 1967 from Chicago with a vision of building from scratch a zoo that showcased animals' natural habitat. Blakely found an empty milo field in northwest Wichita, and three years and $4 million later, the zoo was opened." He retired in 1990. (2001)
Joseph Slowinski, "one of the world's leading venomous snake experts," employed by the California Academy of the Sciences in San Francisco, died on September 12 "while working in Myanmar, Burma, after being bitten by a snake during a scientific field trip," CAS announced. "Details of what exactly happened are still trickling in." Slowinski had been studying the reptiles of Burma since 1997. Robert Stevens, 63, died from anthrax on October 6, the first known victim of bioterrorism believed to have been directed at news media and politicians by associates of the terrorists who hijacked airliners on September 11 and crashed them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Photo editor for The Sun, a supermarket tabloid published by American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Florida, Stevens emigrated from England to take the job in 1973. For about 20 years his main hobby was fishing, but eventually neighbor Susan Carmichael got him interested in cat rescue. "I helped him trap feral cats, and we had them neutered," she told Jo Thomas of The New York Times. Added Thomas, "He made shelters for the cats out of picnic tables, and went with her to feed colonies of restaurant cats." (2001)
Nancy Farley, 45, a Jersey City cat rescuer, died on September 11 at her job with Reinsurance Solutions Inc. on the 94th floor of 1 World Trade Center. (2001)
Timothy O'Sullivan, an employee of the Wildlife Conservation Society, died on September 11 at the World Trade Center. "In honor of his memory," WCS said, "we will donate to the recovery and relief effort all gate proceeds received on Saturday, September 29, at the Bronx Zoo, the New York Aquarium, and the Central Park, Prospect Park, and Queens Zoos." (2001)
Catherine L. Loguidice, 30, a Brooklyn cat rescuer, died September 11 at her job as a Cantor Fitzgerald bond trader on the 105th floor of 1 World Trade Center. (2001)
Jean A. Andrucki, "a committed member of the community," died September 11 at her job in the New York/New Jersey Port Authority treasury office at the World Trade Center. (2001)
Colin Bonnett, 39, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a Barbados-born equestrian, cat rescuer, and former veterinary assistant, died on September 11 at his job as a Marsh & McLennan telecommuications expert in the World Trade Center. (2001)
Laura Rockefeller, 41, of White Plains, New York, is to be memorialized with a bench at the dog run in Riverside Park, New York City. She died on September 11 while directing a seminar for Risk Waters at Windows on the World in the World Trade Cente. She left two cats, Uff and Parker, and a German shepherd mix, J.T, who reportedly still runs to the door looking for her at each approach of a car. (2001)
Dennis White, 55, died from sudden heart failure in Dallas on October 20. A cofounder of the National Animal Control Association, while managing a shelter in Greeley, Colorado, White led the American Humane Association animal protection division from 1976 to 1995, when he became director of the Southwest regional office of the Humane Society of the U.S. White also served on the Department of the Interior Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board and the Delta Society Service Animal Advisory board; was a former trustee of World Society for the Protection of Animals; and founded the National Horse Investigation School. He is survived by his wife of 27 years, Susan White, and their five children. (2001)
Herschel Earl "Sonny" Sides, 58, died recently in Dallas. Inheriting his father's used car business as a teenager, Sides "always drove, but never got a driver's license or Social Security card, had a checking account, or paid taxes," wrote Mark Wrolstad of the Dallas Morning News. After a failed marriage to a Mexican citizen, Sides spent most of his time at his used car lot and junkyard, where he built an unlicensed animal shelter, managed by Cindy Lou Sherman, 41, and Lisa Gayle LeMoine, 32. Sherman and LeMoine told Wrolstad that they had placed about 450 dogs and cats for adoption during their years with Sides. About 140 dogs and 35 cats were left at his death. Operation Kindness, of Carrolltown, reportedly sent three staffers to help Sherman and LeMoine comply with an order from the city to close the shelter and remove the animals. (2001)
Eleanor Ann McDonald, 66, died on October 11 in Port Chester, New York. Acquiring her first bichon frise in 1992, she began breeding and exhibiting a year later. Her bichon frise Special Times Just Right, owned in partnership with handler Flavio Werneck and Cecila Ruggles of Ridgefield, Connecticut, was judged "best dog" at the 2001 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Howard Marks, 92, died in a November 22 fire at his home in Willington, Connecticut. "He could have made it out," said son Clifton Marks, of Norwich, "but he apparently turned back for Tabatha," the Siamese cat his son gave him after his wife died in 1992. Tabatha died with him. (2001)
Patricia Lambert, 57, died on October 18 from cancer. A vegetarian since 1964, Lambert was a longtime member of the North American Vegetarian Society Board of Trustees, a key organizer of the annual Vegetarian Summerfest, president of the Cape Cod Vegetarian Society, and founder of Cape Codders for Wildlife Protection, formed in 1995 to combat U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service killing of seagulls and coyotes at the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge. She was inducted into the Vegetarian Hall of Fame at the 2001 Vegetarian Summerfest. (2001)
Kent Heitholt, 48, sports editor for the Columbia Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri, since 1996, was beaten to death on November 7 by at least two unknown assailants who ambushed him as he fed a stray cat in the Daily Tribune parking lot. Kirsten R. Santiago, 26, handler of two dogs for Bright & Beautiful Therapy Dogs Inc. of New Jersey, was killed on September 11 at her job with Insurance Overload Systems in the World Trade Center. (2001)
Charles Pilling, 90, died on October 25 in his lifelong North Seattle home beside the pond he dug out as a 14-year-old farm boy to serve as a habitat for three crippled mallards he had nursed back to health at age 12. At the pond, Pilling became the first person to breed hooded mergansers in captivity (1955) and buffleheads (1964), and pioneered the use of banty hens as foster mothers for wild duck eggs. In 1990 Pilling was elected fourth member of the International Wild Waterfowl Association's Waterfowl Breeders Hall of Fame. (2001)
David Moody Hopkins, 79, died on November 2 at home in Menlo Park, California. Hopkins was a leading authority on the interactions of North American wildlife and the ice age hunters who crossed a land bridge from Siberia into Alaska. (2001)
Frank Craighead, 85, died on October 21 in Jackson, Wyoming. Craig-head, his twin brother John, and his sister, children's book author Jean Craighead George, learned their love of nature from their father, a USDA entomologist. Teaching themselves falconry, the young men broke into print together with a 1937 article for National Geographic about their adventures and misadventures. The Indian prince K.S. Dharmakumarsinhj read the article and invited them to India to study falconry in 1940. After World War II military duty, Frank and John Craighead pursued separate careers in academia, but teamed up again in 1959 to do the 12-year study of grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park that is credited with saving the species from extinction. Frank Craighead may be best remembered, however, for his 1979 book Track of the Grizzly. (2001)
Lewis Robert Plumb, 78, died on December 9, 2001, in Sacramento, California. A professor of physics for 26 years at Chico State University, Plumb and his late wife Charlotte cofounded the Promoting Animal Welfare Society in Paradise, California, during the early 1980s, funding their work with a thrift shop. An avid statistical analyst, Plumb often contributed ideas and data to ANIMAL PEOPLE. Wrote Richard Avanzino, longtime president of the San Francisco SPCA and now executive director of Maddie's Fund, "Bob and I spent many hours on the phone together hashing over ideas to save lives. Bob was really ahead of the curve in his efforts to design a mathematical formula to evaluate the success of spaying and neutering. I thought the world of him." Plumb did not just advocate what his data showed; he also put serious money into proving the efficacy of subsidized sterilization and neuter/return. "If I were to run the numbers," said Emily Jane Williams, the current PAWS president, "I'm sure more than 100,000 cats and dogs were not born into suffering because of his efforts to help Butte County low-income residents to fix their pets. To them, Bob Plumb was Santa Claus." (2001)
John E. Olson, 49, Jerry Openshaw, 34, and Roger Small, of Marysvale, Clinton, and Roosevelt, Utah, were killed on December 27 while trying to rescue a moose from thin ice at the Mountain Dell Reservoir near Salt Lake City, when the tail rotor of their helicopter struck a power line. The moose was among a herd of 15-20 whom the men were trying to relocate from deep snow in a box canyon. Pilot Olson and assistant Small worked for Helicopter Capture Services, along with Olson's son, John Olson Jr., who had just been dropped off to help from below. Olson and John Zolezzi of San Diego founded the firm in 1996 after working together as spotters for tuna boats. The parents and daughters of Openshaw, a Utah Department of Wildlife Resources biologist since 1998, were also watching the operation from the ground. Openshaw's brother had been killed in a Coast Guard accident just three weeks earlier. (2001)
Joy Belsky, 56, died from breast cancer on December 14 in Portland, Oregon. Belsky studied wildlife in Africa for five years but was driven out by poachers. Back in the U.S., she worked as staff ecologist for first the Oregon Natural Resources Council and later the Oregon Natural Desert Association. "She published more than 45 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters on African and North American grasslands, often blaming livestock for upsetting the balance of plants and wildlife in the arid interior West," wrote Michael Milstein of the Portland Oregonian. Belsky also helped lead the ultimately successful fight to keep the management of the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge from killing coyotes, instead of curtailing grazing, to stimulate the recovery of pronghorns. (2001)
Debbie Prasnicki, 47, was shot dead on December 1 by hunter Mike Berseth, 43, near her home in Stanley, Wisconsin, as she kicked a yellow ball along a public road to amuse her two dogs. "Prasnicki was a nurturing woman whose mothering instincts grew all the more acute during deer season. She hung bells on her pets to protect them from negligent hunters and forbade her two children, Rachel and Seth, from playing in the woods. Her walk with her dogs on December 1 was her first since the regular gun deer season ended on November 25. She was unaware that a special muzzleloader season had begun," wrote Crocker Stephenson of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. (2001)
Joe Maniaci, 54, died on October 2, 2001. Maniaci was longtime animal control officer for Macomb County, Michigan, a volunteer firefighter, former mayor of Richmond Township, president of the Michigan Animal Control Officers Association, and vice president of the National Animal Control Association. (2001)
David Charlebois, a sustaining guardian of the Washington D.C. Humane Society, was first officer on American Air-lines flight 77, hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon on September 11. (2001)
David Arce, 36, a New York City firefighter known for "always bringing home stray cats and dogs," according to his mother Margaret Arce, was killed at the World Trade Center on September 11. (2001)
David L.W. Fodor, 38, a former breeder and exhibitor of Rottweilers, including a national champion, who had turned to rescuing shelter animals, was killed on September 11 while on duty as a volunteer floor fire warden at #2 World Trade Center. (2001)
Sondra Conaty Brace, 60, who with her husband David Brace kept 25 rescued cats at their home in Staten Island, was killed on September 11 at her insurance industry job in the World Trade Center. Joe Lopes, a flight attendant on American Airlines flight 587, which crashed in the Rockaways on November 12, was honored at Christmas with the "Joe Lopes Celebration of Life Tree" and a horseback caroling expedition led by friend and coworker Gloria Smith to raise funds for the Angel's Gate Hospice & Rehabilitation Center for Animals, one of his favorite charities. (2001)
Joseph Yon, M.D., 65, who lived most of his life in Seattle, died on December 5 while trying to rescue his German shepherd mix Jake from a freezing canal near a home he and his wife had just rented in Scottsdale, Arizona. Jake survived. (2001)
Dennis Puleston, 95, founding chair of the Environmental Defense Fund, died on June 8 at his home in Brookhaven, New York. Born in Britain, Puleston was already "an avid naturalist and skilled painter of birds" according to New York Times obituarist Paul Lewis, when he sailed a small boat to the U.S. in 1931 with a friend. He sailed on to China by 1937, before the outbreak of World War II forced his return to Britain. His 1939 marriage to Betty Wellington of New York sent him back to the U.S. as a permanent resident. In 1942 Puleston helped to design the "Duck" amphibious landing craft, then trained Allied Forces to use it. Puleston personally participated in amphibious operations in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and Burma; trained the D-Day "Duck" drivers in Britain after recovering from a spinal wound; and joined in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. For his "Duck" work, Puleston was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1948 by President Harry S. Truman. The same year, while working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Puleston began a longterm study of the ospreys of Gardiners Island, off eastern Long Island. "By the early 1960s," wrote Lewis, "he had concluded that the ospreys were dying out as a result of DDT sprayed to keep down mosquitos. In 1966, four years after the publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, Puleston and several colleagues won a lawsuit against the Suffolk County Mosquito Control Department and secured a year-long ban on DDT spraying." Puleston et al incorporated EDF in 1967 to follow up with national advocacy. By the time Puleston left the chair, in 1972, DDT was banned nationwide. He spent the last three decades of his life developing the ecotourism industry as a lecturer and guide, leading 35 expeditions to Antarctica. (2001)
Vernon W. Evans Jr., 81, of Lutz, Florida, died in June at a Tampa nursing home after a long fight with Parkinson's disease. "He was the judge who ended the use of pound dogs and cats in medical research in Florida," remembered Birusk Tugan of the Tampa Tribune. "'Taking a live, healthy animal, subjecting it to surgical intervention, and then keeping it alive afterward--calling this humane is almost blasphemy,' Evans ruled in December 1986 when he stopped Hillsborough County from selling pound dogs and cats to the University of South Florida. 'Humane has a meaning,' Evans said. 'It doesn't have one meaning for four-legged animals and another for two-legged animals.'" (2001)
Victor G. Koppleberger, 83, died on June 14 at his home in Medina, Ohio. A humane officer, wildlife rehabilitator, and naturalist for more than 30 years, Kopple-berger was previously a hunter. Recalled Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Donna Robb, who profiled Koppleberger for ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1993, "One night he had a vivid dream in which he stood for judgement before every animal he had ever killed. He said the dream was so powerful that from that day he devoted his life to helping animals." (2001)
Charles Schreiner III, 74, of Mountain Home, Texas, died of congestive heart failure on April 22. As heir to his grandfather's Y.O. Ranch, Schreiner began trying to preserve the Texas longhorn cattle lineage in 1957, when there may have been fewer than 1,000 authentic longhorns left, and founded the Texas Longhorn Breeders' Association of America in 1964. There are now about 250,000 longhorns on U.S. ranches. Schreiner also "led a movement to raise exotic animals from Africa and Asia on Texas ranches and charge hunters to shoot them," recalled Douglas Martin of The New York Times, which made Schreiner more-or-less the inventor of the "canned hunt." (2001)
