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: April 2008

Obituaries

 

Charlton Heston, 84, died at home in Beverly Hills, California, on April 6, 2008. Heston had disclosed in 2002 that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer’s disease. An avid hunter in boyhood, Heston from 1941 until late in life was chiefly an actor, except during service in the Army Air Force, 1943-1947. Except for several latecareer cameo appearances, Heston played mostly starring roles in 126 feature films made between 1941 and 2001, including Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, El Cid, Planet of the Apes, Earthquake, and A Touch of Evil. Heston became involved in civil rights activism in the 1950s, and later served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and chair of the American Film Institute, but had his biggest influence on public affairs as president of the National Rifle Association, 1998-2003. Heston personally led the aggressive NRA campaign against Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000, after Gore expressed support for gun control. Wrote Calvin Woodward of Associated Press, “As he had once lifted Moses’ staff in The Ten Commandments, Heston held a musket above his head and dared Gore from afar to pry it ‘from my cold dead hands.’ Gore lost bluecollar votes to Bush in an election so close any setback was perilous. The key finding: About half of voters were from gun-owning households, and they voted for George W. Bush, 61% to 36%. Voters from households without guns backed Gore 58-39. Ever since, Democrats in residential and many Congressional and governors’ races have scrambled to establish their bona fides as hunters, if they can, or as admirers of firearms or the Second Amendment if they can't.”.

 

Malam Musa, 80, longtime keeper at the Kano Zoological Garden in Abuja, Nigeria, died in early March 2008, four months after losing a leg to a hyena who bit him as he turned to shovel dung after leaving the hyena’s food. His death was attributed to a bladder problem..

 

Violet Soo-Hoo, 90, died on March 11, 2008 in San Francisco. Born Violet Howard, in Oak Park, Illinois, she had already enjoyed a long career teaching English and drama at Balboa High School in San Francisco when she met electrical engineer Carroll Soo-Hoo on a 1966 visit to Africa to observe wildlife. One of 11 children of a Chinese immigrant family, Carroll Soo-Hoo spent 28 years as a senior technician and instructor of instrumentation for submarines at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California. During that time he donated the equivalent of 10 years’ worth of his wages to acquire 40 animals worth more than $350,000 for the San Francisco Zoo, then called the Fleishacker Zoo, beginning in 1958. Among them were “gorillas, Barbary apes, cheetahs, Siberian tigers, a jaguar, zebra, hippopotamus, orangutan, spotted hyena, wild dogs, wolves, ostriches, and kookaburras,” recalled Irma Lemus of the San Francisco Examiner after his death in June 1998, at age 84. All were bought, Lemus wrote, “with the understanding that he could visit and play with them. Mr. Soo-Hoo had his own key to the gorilla compound.” After marriage to Carroll Soo-Hoo in 1967, Violet Soo-Hoo helped to raise many of the animals. Among the animals she helped to care for was an orangutan born at the San Francisco Zoo in November 1977, named Violet in her honor, residing at the Honolulu Zoo since 2005. The Soo-Hoos also actively participated in dog and cat rescue and multifaceted animal advocacy. The Soo-Hoos were strongly critical of many zoo practices, including culling older and genetically redundant animals in the name of conservation, and came to oppose wild captures. Eventually they split with the zoo community, but became major supporters of the Primarily Primates sanctuary, the International Primate Protection League, and many other pro-animal projects. Learning of ANIMAL PEOPLE from an obituary for Carroll Soo-Hoo, Violet Soo-Hoo became a frequent caller and writer of letters to the editor in her later years.

 

Ursula Bates, longtime secretary of Solihull Animal Aid, and West Midlands representative for Vegetarians Voice International since Juliet Gelately founded the organization in 1994, died on March 6, 2008 of cancer. A leading campaigner against live exports of British calves in the mid-1990s, Bates in 2005 was instrumental in organizing a memorial for fellow activist Jill Phipps, who was crushed by a cattle truck during a 2005 protest.

 

Val Plumwood, 68, was found dead on March 1, 2008 of an apparent snake or spider bite at her home near Braidwood, New South Wales, Australia. Plumwood, who changed her surname from Routley in honor of a local tree species, wrote influential books entitled Feminism & the Mastery of Nature (1993) and Environmental Culture: the Ecological Crisis of Reason (2002). She had been “a leading campaigner against logging Australia’s native forests and for the preservation of biodiversity since the 1960s,” recalled Associated Press. Attacked by a river crocodile in the northern Outback in 1985, Plumwood “escaped with terrible wounds to her legs and groin after the animal dragged her underwater three times in a death roll, the maneuver crocodiles use to drown their prey,” Associated Press continued. “She said the near-death experience constantly reminded her of the wonder of being alive and gave her a better understanding of our place in nature.” Wrote Plumwood herself, “As I began my 13- hour journey to Darwin Hospital, my rescuers discussed going upriver the next day to shoot a crocodile. I spoke strongly against this plan: I was the intruder, and no good purpose could be served by random revenge.”

Phillip Terry Hagar, 45, of Bakersfield, California, out for a twilight walk on March 6, 2008, was killed by a car while trying to rescue an injured dog from the Rosedale Highway. The dog was also killed.

 

Bonnie Turner, a retired veterinary technician, died on March 15, 008 when a tornado struck her home in Aragon, Georgia, and hurled her 50 feet through the air. Her husband Michael Turner was critically injured. About 35 of her dogs were killed as well, and as many as 100 more dogs were missing. Known locally for doing animal rescue and wildlife rehabilitation, Turner was also known nationally as a breeder and exhibitor of championship Norwegian elkhounds and wirehaired terriers. A photo from the Turner home was found the morning after the tornado in Cornelia, Georgia, 130 miles away.