From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Jacques Cousteau, 87, died June
25. Often ill as a child, Cousteau swam for
his health near his home in St. Andre de
Cubzac, France. He first dived in 1920 on a
visit to Lake Harvey, Vermont, but only
began diving in earnest after a 1936 car crash
forced him to leave the French Naval
Academy flight school. With engineer Emile
Gagnan, Cousteau in 1943 invented the
aqualung and took up underwater filming,
earning the French Legion of Honor for antiNazi
espionage. In 1950 Cousteau bought the
minesweeper Calypso and re-equipped it as a
floating film and TV studio. The screen edition
of his first book, The Silent World
(1953), won the Grand Prize at the 1956
Cannes Film Festival and his first of three
Academy Awards. Cousteau initially touted
the oceans’ economic potential, but reinvented
himself as the world’s most prominent and
popular ecological crusader in The Living Sea
(1963) and World Without Sun (1965), along
with the ABC specials, The World of Jacques
Cousteau (1966) and The Undersea World of
Jacques Cousteau (1968). “The only creatures
on Earth who have bigger and maybe
better brains than humans are the Cetacea,

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

Bebe, 40, reputedly the last of the
original Flipper TV series dolphins, died
May 1 at the Miami Seaquarium, where she
was born in 1956, one year after the facility
opened. But in fact, said Flipper series trainer
Ric O’Barry, Bebe was not among the
seven dolphins who actually performed in the
series, aired 1964-1967. She was, however,
the last dolphin left from the group who were
at the Seaquarium during the filming. “We
used her mother,” O’Barry said, “and certainly
Bebe was always around, but she
wasn’t one of the performers.” Her star performing
days came later. “Bebe was an outgoing
tough old lady,” said Dolphin Freedom
Foundation president Russ Rector, who
worked with her during the 1970s and was
highly critical of the Seaquarium for permitting
her to become pregnant last year, bearing
her eighth calf in November 1996. “She
was a wonderful animal,” said current
Seaquarium director of training Robert Rose.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

Robert Dorsey, 71, described by
Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Andy
Wallace as “an irrepressible animal love
whose favorite line to new acquaintances was
that he worked in the biggest cathouse in
town,” died March 4 in Philadelphia. A former
cab driver, Dorsey took a job as an assistant
laborer at the Philadelphia Zoo circa
1972, when the Yellow Cab drivers went on
strike, cleaned reptile cages until promoted to
assistant keeper, and then advanced again,
becoming keeper of felines. Dorsey retired in
1987, but remained active on behalf of the
zoo and the Pennsylvania SPCA. “His idea
of a day out was to visit the SPCA, and he
took us there countless times,” son Timothy
Dorsey told Wallace.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

R. Reeves co-edited the Sierra Club
Handbook of Whales and Dolphins (1983 and
updates), died January 25 of lymphoma.
Formerly senior research biologist for the
Hubbs Marine Research Institute,
Leatherwood spent his last years with the
Ocean Park Conservation Foundation in Hong
Kong, as representative of the Cetacean
Specialist Group within the International
Union for the Conservation of Nature. His
special project was seeking the survival of the
baiji, or Chinese river dolphin. “There are no
truly reliable numbers on the size of baiji populations,”
Leatherwood warned in November
1995. “Published estimates indicate a decline
from 400 or so in the late 1970s, to 300 or so
in the mid-1980s, to 120 or so in 1993.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Judi Jones, 51, director of operations
since 1989 for the Friends of the Sea
Lion Marine Mammal Center in Laguna
Beach, California, died January 13 of complications
after gall bladder surgery. A registered
nurse, Jones began helping Friends of
the Sea Lion as a volunteer in 1983. The animal
care staff at Sea World San Diego on
January 17 named a rescued baby gray whale
J.J., in her honor.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

M. Alicia Melgaard, linguist,
World War II codebreaker and translator, and
20-year volunteer for the Dona Ana County
Humane Society, died August 10 in Las
Cruces, New Mexico. Founder of the
DACHS neutering fund, Melgaard was also
on the advisory board of the Foundation for
Animal Protection, of Brookfield, Connecticut.
“Alicia gave us credit for new ideas
from our publications, lobbying, and obsession
with spay/neuter,” FAP founder Mildred
Lucas wrote, “but it was she who inspired
us.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1996:

Jim Cook, 37, founder of the Yoknapatawpha Exotic Animal Refuge in of Oxford,
Mississippi, “passed away this weekend while at work,” JES Exotics Sanctuary president Jill
Shumak faxed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on November 19. “We were devastated at the loss of this
awesome, wonderful man,” a longtime sufferer from juvenile onset diabetes who had undergone
installation of an insulin pump just two weeks earlier. Cook and David Mallory of the nearby
Ceder Hill Sanctuary in May bought 84 large exotic cats––46 African lions, 21 tigers, and various
others––at the foreclosure of property owned by Lawrence and Katherine Twiss, of
Philadelphia, Mississippi, who were recently convicted of cruelty for allowing the big cats and
other animals including bears to starve on an 800-acre rented farm. JES Exotics in October
accepted transfer of 10 of the cats.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

Juliet Prowse, 59, died of pancreatic
cancer on September 14. An accomplished
classical ballet dancer in Europe, her
first movie in the U.S., Can Can, (1960) with
Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine, thrust
her into stardom. Over the years, Prowse
appeared in many films, TV shows, and
musicals. Her last stage appearance was in a
west coast theatrical production of the musical
comedy Mame, costarring Gretchen Wyler.
Prowse shared her Los Angeles
home with three dogs and two cats, all
foundlings. During a recent nightclub appearance
as the star of Sugar Baby, she insisted
that special housing be constructed around a
window for the live doves used in the show,
so they might receive light and fresh air.
Outspoken about the treatment of
captive wildlife and the Atlantic Canada seal
hunt, Prowse was for the past two years a
celebrity presenter at the Ark Trust’s Genesis
Awards ceremony. The Genesis Awards
honor individuals in the major media who have
raised public consciousness on animal issues.
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