ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.

 

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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: January/February 2007

Obituaries

 

Carol Chapman, 66, was killed along with 12 cats and her smallest dog, Zoey, on December 18, 2006 after falling and breaking her nose and neck while fighting a pre-dawn housefire at her home in San Jose, California. "Chapman loved cats," recalled Scott Herhold of the Mercury News. "She sometimes had as many as 30 or 40 of them, not to mention Buddy, her German shepherd mix, or her two other beloved mutts, Lacy and Zoey. Before she became sick with cervical cancer, she rescued hundreds of cats," placing them in adoptive homes. A retired Santa Clara social worker, Chapman reputedly screened adopters more thoroughly than the county screened foster parents. She "worked with a clutch of animal rescue groups, most recently with Furry Friends Rescue," Herhold recalled, "often stood outside a local Petco to interest people in taking on an unloved animal," and "Every other week on the Greg Kihn show on KFOX radio, gave a short blurb offering a cat or dog to a good home."

Allison Haskell, 49, died of ovarian cancer on December 17, 2006, nine days short of her 50th birthday, at home in Ashfield, Massachusetts. After earning a masters degree in wildlife biology from the University of Massachusetts, where she studied the population ecology of the Plymouth redbelly turtle, Haskell studied at the Tufts University Veterinary School and spent five years as chief veterinary technician at the Tufts Wildlife Clinic. Haskell worked for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as a research specialist in the Division of Federal Aid from 1993 to 2003, then was national coordinator for Partners in Amphibian & Reptile Conservation. Haskell formed two nonprofit organizations herself, Northeast Wildlife Heritage, funded by sales of her own paintings and handicrafts, and Cures For Ovarian Cancer, incorporated--after she fell ill herself in 2002 --to promote early detection screening.

John F. Kulikowski, 51, the first registered animal rights attorney in Connecticut, and a frequent visitor to the offices of the Animals' Agenda magazine when it was based in Westport and Monroe, Connecticut, died on October 4, 2006, from cumulative effects of meningitis, which he had battled for 10 years.

Virgil Butler, 41, died during the night of December 15, 2006 "in his car in front of his [Arkansas] home where he lived with his partner, Laura Alexander," United Poultry Concerns founder Karen Davis announced. "Butler was a Tyson chicken slaughterhouse worker turned activist," Davis recounted. "In testimony given through PETA in January 2003, Butler described the horrific treatment of chickens that he witnessed every night at the Tyson slaughterhouse in Grannis, Arkansas, from 1997 to 2002. He changed his life completely, speaking out boldly on behalf of chickens, and against the terrible abuse they suffer, at considerable risk to himself in a region dominated by Tyson. In 2002," Davis added, "Butler was a keynote speaker" at the annual UPC Forum. An animal rights movement celebrity, Butler was less well received by mainstream news media after the Los Angeles Times distributed a nationally syndicated profile of him in December 2003, but within days retracted the lead paragraph. "It said that Butler took part in the U.S. invasion of Panama," the L.A. Times corrected, "where he recalled killing enemy soldiers, but the Army has no record of his service. The article stated that Butler shot a man to death in the parking lot of a bar and went to prison for manslaughter. He was convicted of felony burglary. The shooting could not be confirmed."