HUMAN OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2001:

C.R. Pattabi Raman, 94, chair of the Blue Cross of India since 1987, died on June 19. Captain of the Madras cricket team in his youth, and a cofounder of the Madras Cricket Association and Board of Control For Cricket in India, Raman was eldest son of Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar, who banned hunting on all land under his control and founded the Indian Vegetarian Congress, for which Raman was longtime vice president.

Raman’s granddaughter Nanditha Krishna, a noted author and anthropologist, is a trustee of the Central Zoo Authority. Raman was succeeded as chair of the Blue Cross by his grandson-in-law Chinny Krishna, who is the son of Blue Cross founding chair S.R. Sundaram. Krishna was also recently named to the Animal Welfare Board of India.

Dennis White, 55, died from sudden heart failure in Dallas on October 20. A cofounder of the National Animal Control Association, while managing a shelter in Greeley, Colorado, White led the American Humane Association animal protection division from 1976 to 1995, when he became director of the Southwest regional office of the Humane Society of the U.S. White also served on the Department of the Interior Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board and the Delta Society Service Animal Advisory board; was a former trustee of World Society for the Protection of Animals; and founded the National Horse Investigation School. He is survived by his wife of 27 years, Susan White, and their five children.

Barry Horne, 49, died on November 5 after a two-week hunger strike at Long Lartin=20
high security prison in Worchestershire, England. The hunger strike was at least his=20
fifth since he was convicted of a string of arsons against druggists in November 1997, allegedly committed to protest against vivisection, and was sentenced to serve 18 years. Employed as a trash collector, Horne seemed mainly interested in cars and motorcycles until his second wife Aileen introduced him to vegetarianism, antivivisectionism, and hunt sabotage circa 1983. She later reverted to meat-eating, and they separated. In 1988 Horne was fined $3500 and drew a six-month suspended jail term for his part in a botched plan to free a dolphin named Rocky from a now defunct marine park in Lancashire. Horne first went to jail in 1991, for possession of explosives, and had three other brushes with the law before he was taken into permanent custody in 1996.

Herschel Earl “Sonny” Sides, 58, died recently in Dallas. Inheriting his father’s used car business as a teenager, Sides “always drove, but never got a driver’s license or Social Security card, had a checking account, or paid taxes,” wrote Mark Wrolstad of the Dallas Morning News. After a failed marriage to a Mexican citizen, Sides spent most of his time at his used car lot and junkyard, where he built an unlicensed animal shelter, managed by Cindy Lou Sherman, 41, and Lisa Gayle LeMoine, 32. Sherman and LeMoine told Wrolstad that they had placed about 450 dogs and cats for adoption during their years with Sides. About 140 dogs and 35 cats were left at his death. Operation Kindness, of Carrolltown, reportedly sent three staffers to help Sherman and LeMoine comply with an order from the city to close the shelter and remove the animals.

Eleanor Ann McDonald, 66, died on October 11 in Port Chester, New York. Acquiring her first bichon frise in 1992, she began breeding and exhibiting a year later. Her bichon frise Special Times Just Right, owned in partnership with handler Flavio Werneck and Cecila Ruggles of Ridgefield, Connecticut, was judged “best dog” at the 2001 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Howard Marks, 92, died in a November 22 fire at his home in Willington, Connecticut. “He could have made it out,” said son Clifton Marks, of Norwich, “but he apparently turned back for Tabatha,” the Siamese cat his son gave him after his wife died in 1992. Tabatha died with him.

Patricia Lambert, 57, died on October 18 from cancer. A vegetarian since 1964, Lambert was a longtime member of the North American Vegetarian Society Board of Trustees, a key organizer of the annual Vegetarian Summerfest, president of the Cape Cod Vegetarian Society, and founder of Cape Codders for Wildlife Protection, formed in 1995 to combat U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service killing of seagulls and coyotes at the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge. She was inducted into the Vegetarian Hall of Fame at the 2001 Vegetarian Summerfest.

Kent Heitholt, 48, sports editor for the Columbia Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri, since 1996, was beaten to death on November 7 by at least two unknown assailants who ambushed him as he fed a stray cat in the Daily Tribune parking lot.

Kirsten R. Santiago, 26, handler of two dogs for Bright & Beautiful Therapy Dogs Inc. of New Jersey, was killed on September 11 at her job with Insurance Overload Systems in the World Trade Center.

Charles Pilling, 90, died on October 25 in his lifelong North Seattle home beside the pond he dug out as a 14-year-old farm boy to serve as a habitat for three crippled mallards he had nursed back to health at age 12. At the pond, Pilling became the first person to breed hooded mergansers in captivity (1955) and buffleheads (1964), and pioneered the use of banty hens as foster mothers for wild duck eggs. In 1990 Pilling was elected fourth member of the International Wild Waterfowl Association’s Waterfowl Breeders Hall of Fame.

David Moody Hopkins, 79, died on November 2 at home in Menlo Park, California. Hopkins was a leading authority on the interactions of North American wildlife and the ice age hunters who crossed a land bridge from Siberia into Alaska.

Jim Robson, 44, a London Zoo keeper for 26 years and an elephant handler for the past 16 years, was stomped on Octo-ber 21 by an Asian elephant named Dilberta, one of three in the enclosure, after falling down. Newly appointed London Zoo director general Michael Dixon announced 11 days later that the elephants, the last at the London site, would be sent to larger quarters at the Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire. The Born Free Foundation had asked previous director general J.H.W. Gipps to send the elephants to Whipsnade, but Gipps refused. The London Zoo had kept elephants since 1831.

Frank Craighead, 85, died on October 21 in Jackson, Wyoming. Craig-head, his twin=20
brother John, and his sister, children’s book author Jean Craighead George, learned their love of nature from their father, a USDA entomologist. Teaching themselves falconry, the young men broke into print together with a 1937 article for National Geographic about their adventures and misadventures. The Indian prince K.S. Dharmakumarsinhj read the article and invited them to India to study falconry in 1940. After World War II military duty, Frank and John Craighead pursued separate careers in academia, but teamed up again in 1959 to do the 12-year study of grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park that is credited with saving the species from extinction. Frank Craighead may be best remembered, however, for his 1979 book Track of the Grizzly.