Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
Pegeen McAllister, 85, died on
September 24. As longtime Dublin SPCA secretary,
McAllister with Edna Ardagh formed the Irish SPCA
in 1949. “She served for many years on the
Society’s executive council, representing the
Wicklow SPCA, and holding at different times the
offices of chair, president and trustee,”
recalled World Society for the Protection of
Animals director general Peter Davies. Among her
projects, Davies listed, was passage of
legislation in1986 “which provided for setting up
pounds throughout the country and employing dog
wardens to collect strays. Perhaps her most
significant achievement,” Davies said, was
“ending of the export of horses for slaughter in
1960. This trade involved terrible suffering for
animals, often ill or injured, who were shipped
to continental Europe in all weather. Supported
by Margo Dean, Nancy Hatte, and Molly Meyers,
Pegeen visited docks and ships, and saw at first
hand the cruelty involved. She was also closely
involved in setting up the Richard Martin
Restfields, which provide sanctuary for horses
and donkeys.”

Anthony Chiles Peart, 17, escaped with
two other teenaged boys from a pre-dawn housefire
at one of the friends’ homes on October 3 in
Rangiora, New Zealand, but was killed when he
returned inside, against the others’ pleas, to
try to save a small dog. The dog died with him.

Rosamond Halsey Carr, 94, died on
September 29, 2006 at her home near Gisenyi,
Rwanda. “Her niece Ann Howard Halsey said the
cause of death was possibly pneumonia,” reported
Washington Post staff writer Joe Holley. Born in
New Jersey, Carr worked as a fashion illustrator
before marriage in 1942 to British film maker and
trophy hunter Kenneth Carr, with whom she
emigrated to Rwanda in 1949. After the marriage
ended in 1955, Carr remained in Rwanda, raising
flowers for export. Meeting gorilla researcher
Dian Fossey in 1967, Carr became reputedly
Fossey’s closest friend for the last 18 years of
her life. In March 2005 Carr recounted her
memories of Fossey to Georgianne Nienaber,
author of Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian
Fossey. The interview appeared in the March 2005
edition of the International Primate Protection
League magazine. Actress Julie Harris depicted
Carr in the 1988 film based on Fossey’s 1983 book
Gorillas In The Mist. After confronting a Hutu
mob in a futile effort to protect Tutsi neighbors
from massacre during the April 1994 genocide,
Carr was evacuated by Belgian paratroopers, but
returned to Rwanda four months later to convert
her estate into an orphanage housing about 120
children at her death. Carr in 1999 produced an
autobiography, Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life
in Rwanda, co-written by Ann Howard Halsey.

Karadi Bomnan, a forest guard
recalled by Nilgiris wildlife warden Rakesh Kumar
Dogra for his anti-poaching expertise, was
fatally trampled by elephants on October 20 near
Narathi, a village within the Mudumalai Wildlife
Sanctuary & National Park, of Tamil Nadu, India.

Michael Ogorzaly, 58, author of
the 2005 exposé of bullfighting When Bulls Cry,
died on October 14 in Chicago. “SHARK was
pleased to have been able to provide photos,
video, and first-hand accounts of bullfights in
Spain for use in his book,” recalled SHARK
founder Steve Hindi. “Dr. Ogorzaly did a great
service toward banning this cruel so-called
sport.” Left a paraplegic as a teenager, when a
car in which he was a passenger was in an
accident, Ogorzaly became a history professor at
Chicago State University, and was among the
first people in Illinois to drive a vehicle
entirely operated by hand controls.