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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: November/December 2007

Obituaries

 

George Vedder, 91, of Monroe, Connecticut, died on November 18, 2007 in nearby Bridgeport. An engineer/gunner on a B-24 bomber during World War II, Vedder worked after the war as an assembler of aircraft engines. Retiring in 1975, Vedder became a feral cat feeder. In 1991 Vedder teamed with Kim Bartlett and Merritt Clifton to trap, sterilize, vaccinate, and release the many feral cats who inhabited a supermarket parking lot beside the Monroe offices of the Animals' Agenda magazine, where Bartlett was editor and Clifton was news editor. The surgeries were done by Arnold Brown, DVM, of Trumbull. The project expanded to eight main locations in northern Fairfield County, and became the first well-documented U.S. demonstration of neuter/return feral cat control, honored by the Town of Monroe Police Department for keeping a raccoon rabies outbreak from crossing into cats. Designing and building many of the traps used in the project, Vedder continued to promote and practice neuter/return for the rest of his life.

 

Frank Viola, 787, died on October 3, 2007 at his Brooklyn home. Born into a family of Italian immigrant pigeon flyers, Viola joined the U.S. Army early in World War II and donated his first flock to the Signal Corps. He was wounded in the 1944 Normandy invasion. Becoming one of the pigeon racing elite at a time when pigeon flying was at a peak of popularity, Viola observed a rule against either selling or killing a bird, and would give birds to other pigeon fanciers with the stipulation that the birds could never be sold or killed. As interest in pigeon racing declined, Viola in the early 1990s sought to revive it by founding an annual 400-mile Ohio-to-New York invitational race offering $200,000 in prize money, put up from his personal resources. Following his death, the Frank Viola Invitational will no longer be held.

 

Aarti, 9, of Ghookma, near Ghazibad, India, died in late October of an unspecified illness. A wild monkey followed the family members who collected her remains from the hospital where she died, accompanied them to her home, wept beside her body, watched her cremation, and remained there grieving after all of the other mourners left.

 

Tatyana Pavlova, 76, died on August 21, 2007. Recalled VITA president Irina Novozhilova, "In 1989 Pavlova founded the first Russian vegetarian society since the 1917 Revolution. In 1992 she created the Centre for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which aimed to combat the exploitation of animals, and the Scientific Medical Centre, which propagated vegetarianism. Holding degrees in both English literature and biology, Pavlova began her animal protection activities in the late 1960s," Novozhilova wrote, "when she initiated inspections at laboratories, fur farms, and slaughterhouses. Through her efforts, the Ministry of Health in 1977 banned experiments on animals without anaesthetic. Similar edicts were then issued by other ministries with responsibility for research and testing involving animals," including "a regulation barring dissertations from being considered for awards if the research had involved extreme animal suffering." Promoting alternatives to animal use in experiments, Pavlova wrote the first Russian textbook on bioethics for schools, leading to the introduction of bioethics courses at several universities. In the early 1990s, Novozhilova recalled, "Pavlova persuaded a Russian TV channel to broadcast a series of documentaries," produced in western nations, which "introduced the idea that animals have rights to many people. In 1994 she organised the first Russian animal-rights demonstration at Pushkin Square in central Moscw. In 1998, again thanks to her, we saw the first advertisement on the benefits of vegetarianism on the Moscow metro and the first animal rights advertisement at Moscow's Pushkin Square." Pavlova in 1998 authored a Russian Federation draft law on animal protection. "The draft law passed all three necessary readings in the Russian parliament and received the approval of the Council of the Russian Federation," Novozhilova wrote, "but was vetoed in 2000 by Russian president Vladimir Putin, and remains in limbo."

 

Peter A.A. Berle, 69, died on November 1, 2007 from injuries suffered when an outbuilding he was demolishing fell on him at his Angus cattle ranch near Stock-bridge, Massachusetts. An early specialist in environmental law, Berle headed the New York Department of Environmental Conserv-ation from 1976 to 1979, and headed the National Audubon Society from 1985 to 1995. Eric York, 37, a wildlife biologist at Grand Canyon National Park, died of plague on November 2, 2007, several days after doing a necropsy on a puma who had also died of plague. York was the first person to contract plague in Arizona since 2000.


Laurel Burch, 61, died on September 13, 2007 at her home in Novato, California, from complications of osteopetrosis. Born Laurel Anne Harte, she left her highly unstable family at age 14, surviving by cleaning houses and looking after children. Becoming a guitar-playing street musician, she married jazz artist Robert Burch at age 19. Divorced at 20, with a son and daughter to support, and a police record for stealing a piece of meat, Laurel Burch began making jewelry from scrap metal, selling it on the street in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Her favorite themes included cats, birds, horses, and tigers. Indian trader Shashi Singapuri took examples of her work to China. In 1971, when few Americans visited China, Laurel Burch accepted an invitation to go, and learned cloisonné there, an enamel work method that resembles stained glass. Singapuri funded her first manufacturing venture, producing earrings and cloisonné patterns in other media, including fabric. She founded Laurel Burch Inc. in 1979. As her art business rose to commercial success, she began sharing her output with humane societies, donating some items to benefit sales, providing others at discounts. By the mid-1990s Laurel Burch art objects were ubiquitous in humane society boutiques. Her most noted contributions were the murals ornamenting the lobby at the Oakland SPCA shelter in California. Opened in 1992, this was the first shelter funded by PeopleSoft founders David and Cheryl Duffield, who funded Maddie's Adoption Center in San Francisco in 1996, and created Maddie's Fund in 1998. The Oakland SPCA is now the East Bay SPCA, operating two shelters and three clinics.

 

Eric York, 37, a wildlife biologist at Grand Canyon National Park, died of plague on November 2, 2007, several days after doing a necropsy on a puma who had also died of plague. York was the first person to contract plague in Arizona since 2000.


Schaunell Bryant, 15, of Yulee, Florida, who hoped to become a veterinarian, was a passenger in her mother's car on November 1, 2007 when a dog ran in front of them and was hit. Bryant rushed to help the dog, and was fatally struck by Christopher Peeples, 23, of Yulee. The Fernandina Beach News-Leader in Bryant's memory published the ANIMAL PEOPLE tip that people trying to rescue animals from roadways should always block oncoming traffic first with their own vehicles, with four-way flashers on. .