OBITUARIES
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:
Howard Gilman, 73, patron of
the White Oak Conservation Center, at the
White Oak Plantation in Yulee, Florida, died
at the plantation of a heart attack on January
3. Gilman, grandson of Gilman Paper
Company founder Isaac Gilman, took over
the firm in 1973, building it into the largest
privately held producer of paper and building
products in the U.S. He formed the Howard
Gilman Foundation in 1981, becoming
known as a major patron of dance, the visual
arts, and cardiology and AIDS research––but
the Conservation Center, one of his first projects
and one of those of lowest profile, may
have had the most influence, showing
zookeepers the value of space, privacy, and
natural habitat in breeding endangered
species. The center has been instrumental in
breeding captive populations of highly endangered
African and Asian rhinos, cheetahs,
maned wolves, okapis, antelopes, and wild
cattle, and hosted efforts to save the Florida
panther via captive breeding. It also funds
habitat protection in the animals’ native countries.
The work continues under longtime
Conservation Center and plantation general
manager John Lukas, who is outspoken in his
belief that keeping animals in close confinement
is cruelty and should be seen as such.
Steve Siegal, chief organizer of
the biggest-ever Fur Free Friday protests as
New York coordinator of Trans-Species
Unlimited in the late 1980s, died December
20. Siegal left TSU in 1990, about a year
before it renamed itself Animal Rights
Mobilization, closed offices in New York
and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, cut loose a
Chicago affiliate, and moved to Denver.
Gene Wallace, remembered by
longtime friend Sheila Dines of New York as
an energetic animal rescuer and “one of the
first protesters at the Hegins Labor Day
pigeon shoot,” died October 8.
Marguerite Henry, 95, author of
the children’s classics Misty of Chinoteague
(1947), Brighty of the Grand Canyon
(1967), and more than 40 other animal-related
titles, died on November 26 at home in
Rancho Santa Fe, California. The daughter
of a printer, Henry began proofreading at 10
and sold her first short story at 11, but only
discovered her love of animals at age 37,
after she and her late husband Sidney Crocker
Henry relocated to a farm near Wayne,
Illinois. She was 45 before she made an animal
her central character, in Benjamin West
and His Cat Grimalkin (1947)––but she never
stopped writing about animals thereafter.
Anthony Garris, 29, of Chesapeake,
Maryland, was killed by a van on
November 29 while trying to help a dog who
had just been struck in front of his house by a
hit-and-run driver. The dog died too.
Charles Calvert Jr., 24, of Pine
Bluff, Arkansas, was killed on November
26, and Brandon Hunter, 12, was seriously
hurt, when Calvert tried to help Hunter lift an
injured dog out of the road. Both were then
struck by a pickup truck.
Cilicia H. Crawford, 25, of
Tallahassee, Florida, an experienced animal
rescuer, left her five-year-old son and 11-
and-13-year-old stepchildren in her parked
truck on Christmas Eve and tried to lift a
wounded loon out of the road. The loon
pecked her. Startled, she stumbled backward
into the path of one car, was hit, tried to get
up, and was crushed by a second car.
Mawas, 56, the oldest known
orangutan, died December 18 at the Perth
Zoo, her home since 1968, when she was
acquired from the Johore Baru Zoo in
Malaysia. She was noted for her skill in raising
juvenile male orangutans who became too
rowdy for their mothers.
Tuk, 37, the oldest polar bear on
record and last animal at the former Stanley
Park Zoo in Vancouver, died of pnuemonia
on December 9. Tuk and six other orphaned
cubs were donated to the zoo by the Hudson’s
Bay Company in 1962. Always the runt,
Tuk outlived the rest by a decade. In 1984 he
surprised the world by rescuing and comforting
a kitten whom teenagers had tossed into
the bear grotto. Vancouver residents voted to
close the zoo in 1993, but demolition was
delayed so that Tuk could finish his life in
peaceful and familiar surroundings.
General, 20, a 2,000-pound
Brahma bull who was rejected by a bull-riding
school because he wouldn’t buck, died
December 15 after a long career giving bull
rides at the Calgary Stampede and other western
Canadian venues. Tolerant of children
and senior citizens, General shook his head
when drunks approached. He appeared with
Jon Voight in the film Savage Land.
Annabelle, 32, the Asian elephant
around whom the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage
was founded, was euthanized on December
15 after an antibiotic-resistant foot infection
became too painful for her to stand. She
arrived in Alaska in 1966, a circus reject won
in a contest by a local grocer. The grocer
boarded her with John and Sammye Sewell,
who began the nonprofit zoo two years later.
Arrow, 15, an Atlantic bottlenose
dolphin, died December 15 at the Aquarium
of Niagara in Niagara Falls, New York,
where she and her companions Nina and
Misty were sent for the winter while their regular
tank at the Mystic Marinelife Aquarium
in Mystic, Connecticut, is renovated.
Etika, 28, the oldest known
Alaskan sea otter and the only one to rear
pups to adulthood in captivity, died
November 20 at the Seattle Aquarium, her
home since she was captured in 1977.
Kimbee, 17, the last Siberian tiger
at the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport,
Connecticut, was euthanized due to cancer
on December 2, two weeks after her consort,
Chico, was euthanized at age 15 due to hip
dysplasia and arthritis, five months after their
daughter Samantha, 10, died of a urinary
tract tumor. Kimbee and Samantha were
born at the zoo; Chico came in 1981.
Joe Willie, 24, patriarch of the
Milwaukee County Zoo gorilla family but
never a father, was euthanized on December
8 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Veterinary School due to degenerative conditions
resembling Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Kiska, 19, the female polar bear at
the Sacramento Zoo in California, was apparently
killed on November 28 by Adak, her
mate for 17 years. Of 44 polar bear deaths at
zoos since 1995, staff said, 10 were cases of
males killing females.
Calgary, 10, the world’s biggest
Rocky Mountain goat, was euthanized
November 27 at the Woodland Park Zoo in
Seattle, due to complications of age.
Petey, 13, the English bull terrier
mascot of Los Angeles County Fire Station
14 since firefighters saved him from use to
train pit bulls to fight in 1985, was euthanized
on November 24 due to advanced diabetes
and cancer.
