CLEVELAND AMORY (1919-1998)

Cleveland Amory, 81, founder of the Fund for Animals, died in his sleep from a cerebral aneurism on October 14. Born in 1919 in Nahants, Massachusetts, and identified by the official Fund obituary as "scion of a long line of Boston merchants," Amory was often assigned a much less blueblooded and possibly canine pedigree by the irritated targets of his wit--especially hunters, whom he argued should be hunted themselves, to prevent hunter overpopulation and to undo the effects of inbreeding.

"We don't want to wipe them out," Amory stipulated. "We only want to cull them." His most famous slogan is memorialized by the Fund's popular "Support your right to arm bears" bumper sticker.

As a Harvard senior, Amory in 1939 edited the Harvard Crimson, was briefly a reporter for the Nashua Telegraph and the Arizona Daily Star, and then at age 22 became youngest member of The Saturday Evening Post editorial staff. Life, the Post's chief rival for circulation and advertising, was then turning sharply away from previous editorial opposition to vivisection. Amory produced numerous features calculated to appeal to animal lovers, helping win over enough former Life readers that Life responded in kind. The battle for animal-loving readers, mostly female, continued until a male audience more coveted by big-bucks advertisers such as auto makers came marching home from World War II.

Amory left the Post early in the war to join his elder brother Robert Amory Jr. in the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps, but continued to have an influence: witnessing a so-called "bunny bop" in 1945, sponsored by the American Legion at Harmony, North Carolina, he ensured that the event became subject of a Post photo feature, and of a national furor, as the Post for a few weeks reportedly received more letters about the rabbit killing than about the killing in Europe and the Pacific theatre.

Also circa 1945, Amory witnessed and was outraged by his first bullfight.

Robert Amory Jr., an attorney before World War II, ended the war as a colonel, returned to law for six years in Washington D.C., then from 1952 until 1962 fought foreign subversives as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Cleveland Amory meanwhile became one of the most subversive elements ever to mock the status quo from a social position securely inside the establishment. He struck first through radio commentary, while writing a trilogy of popular sociological studies intertwined with satire. His first book, The Proper Bostonians (1947) is now in a 29th printing. The Last Resorts followed in 1952, and then Who Killed Society? in 1960.

Amory also wrote two novels, Home Town and The Trouble With Nowadays. From 1954 until 1963, Amory served as social commentator for the NBC Today show. That ended abruptly after he aired an expose titled "Science is needlessly cruel to animals."

Chief critic for TV Guide from 1963 to 1976, Amory later wrote a column called Animail for The New York Post, wrote a column for Saturday Review, and had a long association with Parade.

Late in life, Amory produced three consecutive best-sellers about a white cat named Polar Bear, whom he adopted as a stray off the street in New York City on Christmas Eve 1977: The Cat Who Came For Christmas (1987), The Cat And The Curmudgeon (1990), and The Best Cat Ever, written after Polar Bear's death in 1992. Polar Bear was buried at the Black Beauty Ranch sanctuary in northeastern Texas; Amory was interred beside him. Amory's final book, Ranch of Dreams, about Black Beauty, appeared in late 1997.

Popular writing earned Amory independent wealth and a host of influential contacts. But he wanted to do more for animals. "I started out writing about Lady Astor and her horse," he often said, "and became more interested in the horse."

In 1953 Amory put his contacts to work by cofounding the National Humane Society, soon renamed the Humane Society of the United States. It was meant to become an aggressive challenger to the American SPCA and the American Humane Association, which then did not oppose either sport hunting or the use of pound animals for biomedical experiments.

Town & County writer Dan Rottenberg in 1981 credited Amory with enlisting into the animal protection cause during his HSUS years the actor Henry Fonda, singer Andy Williams, and the late Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco--along with Ark Trust founder Gretchen Wyler, then more prominent as an actress.

HSUS, however, also proved too conservative for Amory--though he remained on the HSUS board of directors until 1974, when he resigned, he told ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1994, because he opposed the direction it took under John Hoyt, president from 1970 until 1996, toward paying high salaries, doing lots of fundraising, and adopting mainstream positions on the issues.

When another HSUS cofounder, the late Helen Jones, left in early 1959 to found the National Catholic Society for Animal Welfare, Amory served as honorary vice president. Jones' organization later became the International Society for Animal Rights. But it focused on research. Amory wanted to go after hunting. In 1967, therefore, Amory formed the Fund for Animals, winning early endorsements from the actresses Mary Tyler Moore and Angie Dickinson. Typically, Amory branched out almost immediately into other animal protection projects.

Grand Canyon

The action that established The Fund on the national horizon was the 1979 helicopter-assisted rescue of 557 burros targeted for slaughter at the Grand Canyon by the National Park Service, as non-native species who allegedly jeopardized some rare plants. The job cost $500,000--and left Amory with hundreds of animals in urgent need of homes. He solved the problem by purchasing the Black Beauty Ranch, the first and by far the largest of four Fund refuges. Named in honor of the Anna Sewell novel Black Beauty, the ranch has expanded to accommodate further rescues. The biggest was the 1985 removal of 7,500 feral goats and pigs from San Clemente Island, off the coast of California, who were to have been killed by military sharpshooters. Amory won a reprieve for the animals with a call to then-Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, a former Harvard classmate.

Other rescues included the acquisitions of Nim Chimpsky, a chimp who had been used in language experiments, and of two elephants from severely substandard zoos.

Amory also took a leading role in marine mammal protection during the early Fund years, mobilizing celebrities against the Canadian seal hunt and helping Paul Watson form the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society by granting him the funds to buy his first ship, with which he rammed the pirate whaler Sierra off the Azores in June 1979. In gratitude, Watson named the ship he used during his 1985 campaign against dragnetting off Atlantic Canada The Cleveland Amory.

A crew member aboard the June 1979 Sea Shepherd mission, who disembarked just before the actual ramming, was Alex Pacheco, then age 19. Amory remembered him as a volunteer "who practically grew up in our Cincinnati office."

Amory encouraged Pacheco and Ingrid Newkirk when in 1981 they founded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Amory and other Fund figures joined Pacheco and Newkirk in taking over the New England Anti-Vivisection Society through a series of contested board elections and lawsuits in 1986-1988. Finally deposing former NEAVS president Robert Ford, a probate judge who was eventually sanctioned for misconduct in managing NEAVS assets, the Fund/PETA coalition ran NEAVS, with Amory as president, until 1996, when the alliance split over the question of who would succeed Amory. A faction led by Pacheco temporarily seized control, but was ousted when the Fund faction won in court. NEAVS is now headed by longtime Massachusetts activist Theo Capaldo.

From the first, Amory's management style emphasized enterprise and accountability. Fund financial disclosure statements have always been distinctively timely and thorough, neatly handwritten by Amory's longtime assistant Marian Probst. Neither Amory nor Probst ever took a salary from the Fund; Amory paid Probst himself. Personnel at as many as 29 field offices enjoyed rare autonomy, but have also worked for the lowest pay scale and least benefits offered by any major national animal protection organization.

The economic restraint has prompted many former Fund staff to move into management roles at other organizations--but the freedom to develop individual campaigns has caused other Fund employees to decline much more lucrative opportunities.

Though Amory wasn't quick to write checks, he was generous toward smaller organizations when convinced of the value of their work. He significantly assisted Wild Burro Rescue many times, after it began removing burros from Death Valley National Monument to keep the National Park Service from shooting them, and in 1994 surprised Concern for Helping Animals in Israel with $10,000 toward the cost of a humane education center.

Amory had transient but pivotal roles in the careers of ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett and editor Merritt Clifton. Bartlett in 1971 quit wearing a gift fur coat and took up anti-trapping activism after receiving a Fund mailer. She resolved to dedicate her life to animal protection after Amory signed a copy of Man Kind? for her in 1974.

Bartlett in 1986 became editor of The Animals' Agenda magazine. Auditioning on short notice as a lead feature writer, without ever having met Bartlett, and up against a Monday morning deadline, Clifton reached Amory--to whom he was a total stranger--late on a Friday afternoon. Few other sources made themselves available, and fewer still were forthcoming with potentially sensitive information, but Amory and Marian Probst rushed everything they thought Clifton might need, via courier, to the remote office he then had in rural Quebec.

"Hey, I know what it's like to be a freelance on a deadline," Amory growled, brushed aside thanks, and without any prompting to do so, changed the subject to bawdy escapades he claimed to have enjoyed with prominent actresses.

Known for self-contradiction, Amory endorsed feminism to the extent of hiring women to fill most key positions within The Fund, but cultivated an image as a rake; endorsed vegetarianism, but never quite achieved it himself; was a lifetime member of the New York Athletic Club without ever having been an athlete; and was Episcopalian, but practiced religious philanthropy chiefly toward Jewish charities working in Israel.

Probst told ANIMAL PEOPLE on October 16 that although the Fund board of directors has not yet selected a successor to Amory as Fund president, the organizational strategic blueprint is firm through early 1999. The board does have a short list of potential successors, she added. The list is to be reviewed at a December board meeting. A decision will probably then be made during the next 90 days. Probst will serve as acting president until a permanent successor is announced.