OBITUARIES
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:
British film director James Hill, 75,
died October 9. Hill’s most successful produc-
tions were Born Free, 1966, starring Virginia
McKenna and Bill Travers, and the 1971 ver-
sion of Black Beauty.
Arlie Coplin, 40, a longtime office
volunteer for the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society, died August 25 of skin cancer. Born
in Huntington Beach, California, Coplin lived
most of his life in nearby Fallbrook, where
after a stint as a Navy flight mechanic he
became a building contractor. “Until the day
he died,” the Sea Shepherd Log memorialized,
“Arlie was most concerned that he was leaving
the world with the future existence of whales
uncertain. He loved them desperately and he
regretted dying without having gone to sea
himself to protect them. We had been trying to
get Arlie on board as a crew member for a long
time,” but logistics interfered. Coplin’s sur-
vivors included his mother Helen Coplin, and
sisters Lois Sontag and Karen Valek.
