Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The
evil that men do lives after them. The good is
oft interred with their bones.” –William
Shakespeare
Princess Antoinette Monegasque of Monaco,
90, died on March 18, 2011 at the Princess
Grace Hospital in Monaco. The elder sister of
Prince Rainier of Monaco, Antoinette was best
known during the first two-thirds of her life for
involvement in scandalous liaisons, failed
marriages, the death of her third husband–ten
years younger than she –after just six weeks of
marriage, and a failed attempt to put her three
children born from wedlock ahead of Rainier in
the royal succession. Exiled from Monaco in the

early 1950s, perhaps voluntarily, Antoinette
established the Monaco Society for the Protection
of Animals at her villa Le Bout de Monde (End of
the World) in nearby Eze, France. To that point
Rainier, a friend and resort development partner
of the then-Monaco-based whaler Aristotle
Onassis, had exhibited interest in animals
chiefly by way of shooting them– often with
Onassis. However, in 1956 actress Grace Kelly
obliged Rainier to give up shooting captive
birds, and to ban bird-shooting in Monaco, as
conditions of marriage. Openly detesting
Onassis, Grace effected a reconciliation between
Rainier and Antoinette. Rainier wrongly
anticipated reconciling Grace and Onassis when in
1961 he persuaded Onassis to join British
wildlife artist and trophy hunter Peter Scott,
Prince Philip of Britain, and Prince Bernhardt
of The Netherlands in founding the World Wildlife
Fund. Instead the rift between Grace and Onassis
widened until Onassis sold his Monaco holdings at
a tenfold profit and left in 1965. Rainier
remained involved with WWF to the end of his
life, but the tiny Monaco zoo, favored by Grace
and Antoinette, fell into disrepute after Grace
was killed in a 1982 car crash. Grace’s
daughter, Princess Caroline, meanwhile
enthusiastically took up shooting boar.
Antoinette, however, became close to Grace’s
son, Prince Albert, who inherited the throne
after Ranier’s death in 2005. Antoinette
remained president of the Monaco SPA until her
death.
Etela Merk, 48, founder of an animal
shelter at Backa Topola, Serbia, in 2001, was
killed in a March 7, 2011 fire which may have
been started by candles she was using for light
instead of electricity, after her shelter ran
into critical financial trouble. A professor at
the Belgrade Academy of Art, with a
four-year-old son, Merk left more than 300 dogs
and 27 cats. Other shelters in Belgrade and
Volvodina were able to accommodate the cats, and
were trying to place the dogs in other nations,
reported Serbian Animals Voice.
Sumner Matthes, 80, died on April 5,
2011, in Sarasota, Florida. Retiring to
Sarasota after 22 years in the U.S. Air Force,
Matthes served as treasurer of the Humane Society
of Sarasota County, on the Sarasota County
Animal Welfare Board, and with the Sarasota
County Sheriff’s Animal Services. He campaigned
to rebuild the Sarasota County Animal Shelter,
to start the first Sarasota County dog and cat
sterilization program, to ban canned hunts in
Sarasota County, and to update county animal
control ordinances. In 1988 Sumner and his wife
Elise Matthes founded the Sarasota In Defense of
Animals sanctuary. As a test of whether the
Florida habitat could support more panthers, the
Florida Game & Fresh Water Fish Com-mission in
1993 released 19 radio-collared Texas cougars in
northern Florida. The males were supposed to
have been vasectomized, but one, T-33, sired
three litters of kittens with Texan mates. When
the Texas cougars were captured, eight of the
offspring ended up at a Texas hunting ranch.
Three were shot for trophies before Matthes found
them, bought them, and placed them at the now
defunct Wild Animal Orphanage sanctuary near San
Antonio. The rescue cost $39,000, of which
Sumner and Elise Matthes were obliged to borrow
$14,000. Their effort led to an investigation
and restructuring of the Florida Panther Trust
Fund. Sumner and Elise Matthes later
participated in many other exotic animal rescues,
including for the World Society for the
Protection of Animals. Both also served on the
Wild Animal Orphanage board. After sterilizing
more than 1,300 feral cats since 2006, the
Sarasota IDA Feral & Free-Roaming Cat Clinic
closed due to lack of funds in February 2010.
Elise Matthes announced in July 2010 that the
Sarasota IDA sanctuary is also having to scale
back due to financial stress.
Dick Power, 84, of Boherlode House,
Ballyneety, County Limerick, died on March 22,
2011. A lifelong farmer, introduced to hare
coursing and hunting with firearms at age 9,
Power took a different view of blood sports when,
“After marrying a hunting lady in the mid-1950s,
I accompanied her to hunts,” he wrote in January
2011. Power recalled first disrupting a hunt on
St. Patrick’s Day 1959. By 1962 he had become
aware that farmers who fed their ewes well seldom
lost lambs to foxes, a hint that alleged fox
predation, the rationale for fox hunting, might
actually be scavenging. In 1966 Power and others
including comedienne Maureen Potter and actors
John Cowley and Desmond Perry cofounded the Irish
Council Against Blood Sports. Power was the last
surviving founder. Wrote Phil Kiernan of ICABS,
“For the next 45 years, Dick was a constant in
the campaign to outlaw hunting wild animals with
dogs, his wonderfully penned letters appearing
regularly in the national and local newspapers.
He routinely fed foxes on his farm, and they
would be waiting for him to turn up in the
evenings for their snack, he often told us.
Dick was a highly intelligent and very well read
man, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of things
agricultural, nature, history and much more.”
Recalled the Irish Times, “In the run-up to last
year’s Dáil debate on stag hunting, he reminded
all that St Eustace had been an avid stag hunter
prior to his conversion to Christianity, after
which the future saint renounced both the
persecution of Christians and hunting stags with
hounds. Another story he enjoyed recounting was
of how St Patrick rescued a fawn from a deer hunt
in the sixth century.”
Bruce Stephenson, 51, was found dead
after an armed standoff with police on March 31,
2011 in Homestead, Florida. Police at last
report had not released an official cause of
death. The Miami-Dade Police Department Special
Response Team was reportedly called to the Tom
Crutchfield Reptile Farm after Stephenson grazed
Crutchfield with a bullet during an argument.
“While the the farm featured Crutchfield’s name,
Stephenson, a former radiology supervisor,
owned the farm and had the license to import
reptiles,” wrote Kyle Munenrider of the Miami
New Times. Crutchfield has been known for more
than 40 years for producing color variants of
snakes and lizards. Stephenson was known for
breeding turtles.
Zareen Patel, 61, died of a heart
attack on March 26, 2011 in Mumbai, India. A
pediatrician and genetic researcher at the Bai
Jerbai Wadia Children’s Hospital in Mumbai, and
with the Indian Council of Medical Research,
Patel began sheltering street dogs at her Pune
estate circa 1990. Eighteen kennels at her home
housed 135 dogs at her death, who were looked
after by two volunteers. Patel also kept seven
pet dogs at her Mumbai apartment. The Bombay
SPCA took in the Mumbai dogs, The Pune charity
ResQ, headed by Ayesha Gandhi, arranged to feed
and seek home for the Pune dogs.