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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: March 2006

O B I T U A R I E S


Harry Rowsell, 84, died on February 3, 2006. From 1968 to 1992 Rowsell served as founding director of the Canadian Council of Animal Care, formed to supervise animal welfare in laboratories. He also served as a member of the Scientists Center for Animal Welfare board of trustees, 1983-1986. The SCAW Rowsell Award is named in his honor. A veterinary pathlogist, Rowsell witnessed the Atlantic Canada seal hunt in 1973, as a member of the Canadian Ministry of Fisheries’ Seals & Sealing Committee. “It’s a hell of a thing,” he testified afterward. “Stop telling people to write letters to Canada and Norway,” Rowsell advised activists. “Tell them instead to start a worldwide campaign against wearing fur.” Rowsell “brought many reforms to Canada on animal experimentation, and on the use of animals in education. He was a great friend of [Animal Welfare Institute founder] Christine Stevens, and a major influence on me,” In The Name of Science author Barbara Orlans told ANIMAL PEOPLE.

 

Prahlad Gowala, of Golaghat, Assam state, India, “died young on January 6, reporting against the wildlife crimes of so-called protectors who have turned predators,” colleague Azam Siddiqui told ANIMAL PEOPLE. Reported The Hindu, “Journalists sat in protest wearing black masks, boycotting the Kaziranga Elephant Festival,” held a few days later, “demanding justice for the murder of Goala, a correspondent for the regional daily Asomiya Khaba in Thuramukh. Married and the father of a 14-month-old girl, Goala was run down by a car while traveling on a motorcycle. He was then repeatedly stabbed by several men and died of head injuries.” Nambar Reserve senior forest ranger K.Z. Zaman Jinnah “was arrested on suspicion of hiring men to kill Goala,” The Hindu added. “Jinnah made death threats against Goala and his family after Goala wrote a series of articles a week before, accusing him of corruption and misconduct.” The Telegraph, of Calcutta, reported that “The journalist was knocked down by Jinnah’s vehicle.”

 

Vaughn Brady, 71, of Armstrong Township, Pennsylvania, on February 15 tried to rescue a calf who had fallen through ice on a pond, but died with the calf when his safety rope pulled loose.

 

Coretta Scott King, 78, widowed by the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., died on January 30, 2006, in Atlanta. After the assassination, Mrs. King raised their four children, including son Dexter Scott King, now also a prominent civil rights leader, and continued as many of her late husband’s projects as she could. Through the influence of comedian/activist and animal advocate Dick Gregory, Dexter Scott King became a vegetarian in 1987. Mrs. King followed him into veganism in 1995. Longtime friend Barbara A. Reynolds and others close to her emphasized her vegan beliefs in published remembrances.

 

James W. Fitzgerald, 88, died of cancer on January 16 in New London, Connecticut. “At a cocktail party in Annapolis in 1964, Fitzgerald mentioned to a Navy admiral that dolphins, who rely on natural sonar for hearing and navigation, might prove useful in warfare,” Washington Post staff writer Joe Holley recounted. “The admiral introduced him to a CIA specialist in underwater combat. As Fitzgerald’s wife recalled, the CIA sent him to Key West, where he set up a classified laboratory to study whether dolphin hydrodynamics could be applied to the design of submarines, torpedoes, and missiles, and whether the animals could be trained to perform missions. Working with a half-dozen dolphins, he and his associates learned that dolphins could be used to seek underwater mines, attach explosives and eavesdropping devices on enemy ships, and help divers recover lost items.”

 

John L. Behler, 62, died from congestive heart failure on January 31, 2006, at home in Amawalk, New York. Behler joined the Bronx Zoo staff in 1970, becoming curator of herpetology in 1976. In 1979 Behler and F. Wayne King co-authored the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles & Amphibians. “Behler made impassioned efforts to preserve rare species of tortoises in Madagascar as well as turtles and alligators in China, even as he advocated for less colorful creatures found in ponds and bogs in New York State,” recalled Jeremy Pearce of The New York Times. “In the early 1990s he warned about the increasing trade in wild Asian turtles in China,” but instead of working to discourage turtle consumption, Behler endorsed farming turtles. Turtle farming now provides legal cover to poachers, who are as active as ever, typically now marketing their prey as “farmed.”

Roberta Keese, 63, died after a long illness on February 3 in Randolph, Massa-chusetts. Keese founded the no-kill Hilltop Humane society in 1965, and headed it for the rest of her life. “Back in 1991 when I was launching the Neponset Valley Humane Society, Roberta was a huge help,” recalled Bonney Brown of Alley Cat Allies. “She was an inspiration and truly a mentor to me.”


Peter Benchley, 65, died at home in Princeton, New Jersey on February 11 from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The grandson of humorist Robert Benchley and son of Nathaniel Benchley, author of historical books for children, Peter Benchley worked for the Washington Post and Newsweek, spent two years as a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson, then published his best-selling first novel Jaws, about a serial-killing great white shark, in 1974. He later co-authored the screenplay for the Steven Spielberg film Jaws. Benchley spent much of the rest of his life as an advocate of sharks, hosting television programs, writing for National Geographic, and serving on the Environmental Defense national council. “He cared very much about sharks. He spent most of his life trying to explain to people that if you are in the ocean, you’re in the shark’s territory,” said his wife of 41 years, Wendy Benchley.

 

Kevin Li, 50, who for the last 10 years of his life led efforts to restore purple martins to the Seattle area, died from an apparent heart attack on January 28 while scuba diving near the Keystone ferry dock on Whidbey Island, Washington. “While in high school, he worked in the invertebrate lab at the Smithsonian. Institution,” wrote Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Gordy Holt. “He went on to participate in an Audubon Society puffin recovery project in Maine. He counted fish in the Bering Sea, worked on a lizard project in Honduras, and attached himself to a shrimp program in El Salvador.”

 

Solomon Mthembu, 33, a game ranger at the Thanda Game Reserve in Mkhunze. KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, was killed on February 18 by a raging elephant. Although Mthembu and two fellow rangers who were on patrol with him all had weapons, none fired them, said Thanda superintendent Jay Naicker.

 

Catherine “Dodie” Cariaso, 56, on January 12, 2006 “allegedly robbed a bank in Loveland [Colorado] and led officers on a 15-minute chase down country backroads, across the Larimer-Boulder County line,” Chris Barge of the Rocky Mountain News reported. “It ended when she pulled over, brandished a toy pistol that appeared to be a revolver, and was shot dead.” Cariaso, an alleged puppy miller whose American Kennel Club registration was cancelled, “was jailed last year for 60 days after authorities found she had gone out of town, abandoning 84 Labrador retrievers, 54 of them so sick they had to be euthanized,” Burge recalled.


Gina Gracio of Escondido, Calif-ornia, founder of San Diego Pet Rescue in Poway, was killed along with two small dogs in a fiery January 12 head-on collision in Foster, just south of Poway, when a tractor/trailer rig made a sudden stop and jackknifed into her lane, hitting her car twice and flipping it over. Gracio volunteered for other local organizations for four years before starting San Diego Pet Rescue in 2002.

 

Mack “Jack” Slye Crippen, 77, died on February 9, 2006 from pneumonia in Reston, Virginia. By turns a dairy farmer, cattle auctioneer, land developer, banker, and landfill operator, Crippen took up fox hunting and steeplechase racing as he made his fortune. He started the Reston Pet-a-Pet Zoo, later known as the Reston Animal Park, in the late 1970s, then sold it in 1980. After a 1999 relocation, it became the Leesburg Animal Park. Forced to close a landfill he owned in Great Falls, Crippen in 1988 turned the site into his second roadside zoo, called Lockmoor Park. “He served for five years on the Fairfax County animal control board,” recalled Washington Post staff writer Patricia Sullivan, but “Fairfax’s animal warden hauled him into court because he lacked required permits to own and breed exotic animals.” Crippen and his zoos were unflatteringly depicted in Animal Underworld, by Alan Green (1999).