Obituaries
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 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
Darla Napora, 32, was fatally mauled in her home in Pacifica, California on August 11, 2011 by her two-year-old non-neutered pit bull terrier Gunner. Police shot Gunner at the scene. Autopsy and necropsy results showed that a spayed six-year-old female pit bull named Tazi, also present, was not involved. Napora’s husband, Greg Napora, 30, buried Gunner’s remains with her. Napora, who was pregnant, was reportedly an active member of Bay Area Dog Lovers Responsible About Pit Bulls . The BADRAP web site lists neutering pit bulls second on a list of rules for keeping them safely.
Shahla Masood, 35, of Bhopal, India, was fatally shot in her car outside her home by an unknown assailant at about 11 a.m. on August 16, 2011. Using the Right To Information act, Masood had recently “raised questions regarding several tiger deaths across Madhya Pradesh,” associate Ajay Dubey told media, suggesting that “People involved in the [tiger poaching] racket may be responsible.” Masood in August 2010 organized an exhibition of photos of tigers in Bhopal to draw attention to the failure of wildlife officials to arrest the alleged killers of a tigress named Jhurjhura.
Toshisada Nishida, 70, died on June 8 in Kyoto, Japan. Remembered Great Apes Survival Partnership coordinator Doug Cress, “Nishida spent 40 years observing chimpanzee behavior in the Mahale Mountains of southern Tanzania, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. His research yielded important findings regarding tool use, communication, female transfers between groups, coalition tactics, and a host of other topics.” Nishida, Jane Goodall, Richard Leakey, Russell Mittermeier, and Richard Wrangham were the founding patrons of the Great Ape Survival Partnership. Nishida was former head of evolution studies at Kyoto University, and was president of the International Primatological Society in 1996-2000.
Tom Petrovic, 47, died on July 19, 2011 in Risan, Montenegro, after swerving his motorcycle off a rural road near Kotor for an unknown reason, possibly to avoid an animal. His companion Perica Radonjic, 38, suffered minor injuries. A graphic designer for Direct Mail Systems Inc., of Clearwater, Florida, which represents several dozen animal charities, Petrovic “handled creative for all of my clients, including ANIMAL PEOPLE,” recalled his supervisor, Paul Siegel, “and did all of Sea Shepherd’s stuff for eight years. He was very proud of this work in particular. We even used shots of his dog Rockie on a few envelopes.”
Bernice Evelyn Adolph, 72, an elder of the Xaxli’p First Nation, was killed by a black bear on June 26, 2011 near her home in Lillooet, British Columbia. The bear, identified by DNA traces, was shot nearby on July 9. Adolph had asked the Xaxli’p First Nation to deter bears who were approaching her house, “but she didn’t want us to harm the bears, saying ‘they’re small’ and to not hurt them,” Chief Art Adolph told Mike Raptis of the Vancouver Province.
Larry Kiding, 28, was the only publicly identified victim of an outbreak of the bacterial melioidosis that killed three people who were employed by the Sarawak Forest Department to rescue animals from fast-rising waters after the October 2010 completion of the Bkun Dam. The deaths came to light in August 2011 when Kiding’s father, Jugh Anak Kudi, described Kiding’s death to Joseph Tawie of Free Malaysia Today.
Findlay Russell, M.D., 92, author of Snake Venom Poisoning (1980), died on August 21, 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona. A multi-time decorated Army medic in World War II, Russell earned his medical degree at age 33 in 1952. Despite his late start, he become globally recognized as a leading expert on toxins and venomous animals.
Heather Brewster, 34, of Madisonville, Louisiana, was killed on August 4, 2011, when Bailey Wenk, 22, of Covington, turned her car in front of a motorcycle driven by Donald Stockman, 46, of Bush. Brewster was a passenger on the motorcycle. Wenk was charged with negligent homicide. An employee of St. Tammany Animal Services since 2004, Brewster was promoted to assistant director in 2008.
Joseph V. Brady, 89, died on July 29, 2011 in Baltimore. As chief of experimental psychology and deputy director of neuropsychiatry at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Bethesda, Maryland, 1951-1970, Brady produced an influential 1958 Scientific American article entitled “Ulcers in Executive Monkeys.” Brady subsequently trained a six-pound rhesus monkey named Able and an 11-ounce squirrel monkey named Baker for a May 1959 suborbital space flight. “Able died soon after she returned from space, during surgery to remove an electrode in her body. Baker died of kidney failure in 1984,” recalled T. Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post. Brady next helped to train Ham, a three-year-old chimpanzee, who on January 1, 1961 flew in a Mercury space capsule similar to the one flown by Alan Shepard Jr. in the first U.S. manned space flight five months later. Retired from NASA to the National Zoo in 1963, where Brady reportedly often visited him, Ham was transferred to the North Carolina Zoo in 1980 and died in 1983.
Arianna Cox, 11, of Hanover County, Virginia, was killed on August 26, 2011 while trying to free a horse who had become stuck in a gate during preparations for Hurricane Irene.
Pashupati Mahato 58, a forestry worker in Purulia District, West Bengal, India, on August 23, 2011 stood between a stone-throwing mob and an elephant who was blocking a road. “In trying to pacify the crowd, Pashupati Mahato ventured too close to the tusker, who lifted him high in the air and dashed him to the ground,” inflicting fatal injuries, divisional forest officer V. Salimat told Ananya Dutta of The Hindu.
Olive Nash, 76, died on July 19, 2011 in Ashington, England. “Born in London during the Great Depression, her father’s sudden death plunged her family into poverty so severe that the children developed rickets from malnourishment, were put in leg braces, and chronically feared eviction,” recalled Concern for Helping Animals in Israel founder Nina Natelson. “Her sense of security, along with her education, were further disrupted by the evacuation of children from the city during World War II. By the time she was 14, she had completed a secretarial course and become self-supporting,” Natelson added. Long employed by the World Bank, “Olive volunteered at every animal charity in the Washington D.C. area,” Natelson told ANMAL PEOPLE. “Aattending demos and volunteering,” including patrolling the grounds of Hope Buyukmihci’s Unexpected Wildlife Refuge during hunting season, “were her life,” Natelson said.
