Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 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

Sue Farinato,  61, died on October 25,  2011 at her home in
Damascus,  Maryland.  Born Sue Lunson in Portsmouth,  Virginia,  she
became involved in bird rescue in childhood and continued to do
wildlife rehabilitation throughout her life,  founding an
organization called Wildlife Aid Brigade in 2007 to help train
wildlife rescuers.  She met her husband Richard Farinato in 1972,
when both were employed by the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston.  While
Richard Farinato developed his career as a wildlife specialist with
the Humane Society of the U.S.,  Sue Farinato in 1987 founded the
South Carolina animal advocacy group Peaceable Kingdom,  challenging
hunters,  trappers,  the fur industry,  roadside zoos,  and traveling
animal shows,  most prominently the notorious Tim Rivers Diving Mule
Act.  Joining her husband at HSUS in 2003, she “served in a number of
capacities including as outreach coordinator for the Wildlife Land
Trust,  issues information specialist for Animal Research Issues,
animal services coordinator at the Black Beauty Ranch,  membership
manager for the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association,  and
for the past three years as program assistant for Pet Care Issues in
Companion Animals,”  recalled HSUS president Wayne Pacelle.  Among
the last animals Sue Farinato handled was an injured pigeon whom
Pacelle and his fiancee Lisa found on a Washington D.C. street.

Gautam Barat died of brain cancer on October 30,  2011 in New
Delhi,  India.  “Gautam was a little boy when I met him,”  recalled
Geeta Seshamani,  who with Barat and his sister Sreelata cofounded
the Friendicoes Society for the Eradication of Cruelty to Animals in
April 1979.  The three–and People for Animals founder Maneka
Gandhi– became acquainted as volunteers for the Animals Friend
shelter founded by Crystal Rogers,  who later founded the animal
charities Help In Suffering in Jaipur and Compassion Unlimited Plus
Action in Bangalore.  Encouraged by Rogers’ example, the Barats and
Seshamani opened the first of two Friendicoes shelters in 1980.
Gautam Barat spent the rest of his life as the shelter manager.

Susan Hagood,  54,   died of cancer on November 8,  2011.  A
Defenders of Wildlife issues specialist in the mid-1980s,  Hagood
became acquainted with then-Defenders of Wildlife executive vice
president John Grandy,  who in 1985 became senior vice president for
wildlife and habitat protection at the Humane Society of the U.S.  In
July 1991 Hagood followed Grandy to HSUS.  “In Susan’s early years
here,  she worked on predator control  and wild horses,  and helped
to build a documentary photo library,”  recalled HSUS president Wayne
Pacelle.  “She also did extensive research into the funding of state
wildlife agencies.  I carried her report around the country,  arguing
that the deck was stacked against wildlife because of the composition
of the agencies.  In subsequent years,”  Pacelle said,  “Susan
pursued her passionate interest in the mitigation of human-wildlife
conflict, especially in the areas of development and transportation.”
Hagood earned a Ph.D. in 2009 with a dissertation on “Genetic
Differentiation of Selected Eastern Box Turtle (Terepene carolina)
Populations in Fragmented Habitats, and a Comparison of Road-Based
Mortality Rates to Population Size.”

Alan Richard Mootnick,  60, died on November 4,  2011 from
complications after heart surgery.  A dental technician turned
welder,  painter,  and remodeler,  Mootnick adopted a gibbon in 1976
when a previous keeper gave her up.  He formed the nonprofit Gibbon
Conservation Center in Santa Clarita,  California,  to house her,
and acquired a mate for her from a zoo in Rhode Island in 1978.  Then
the owner of several classic Jaguar automobiles,  Mootnick sold them
to build the present Gibbon Conservation Center in 1980.  The center
houses 44 gibbons.  “Completely self-taught in primatology,  Mootnick
was one of a team responsible for identifying and naming the highly
endangered Hoolock Gibbon.  He published more than 30 articles in
peer-reviewed journals and was the studbook keeper for five species
and husbandry advisor for the [American Zoo Association] Gibbon
Species Survival Plan,”  recalled Julie D. Taylor in a death notice.

Elsie P. (Johnson) Mitchell died on October 17,  2011.   “One
of the pioneers of American Buddhism,”  recalled a family death
notice,  “Mrs. Mitchell co-founded the Cambridge Buddhist Association
in 1957.  Her recordings of Buddhist chants are housed at the
Smithsonian.  She wrote extensively about her experiences following
the Buddhist path as well as a family history about 19th century
Boston.”  Her best known book,  however,  may be The Lion Dog of
Buddhist Asia,  a 1991 history of the Lhasa Apso breed.   With her
husband John Mitchell,  Elsie Mitchell founded the Ahimsa Foundation
in 1981,  which makes grants to animal charities.  “When I was sued
in 1984 by the Austrian multinational Immuno AG for attempting to
block its plans to set up a chimp lab in Sierra Leone,”
International Primate Protection League founder Shirley McGreal told
ANIMAL PEOPLE,  “John and Elsie hired an expensive New York attorney
to keep me out of the slammer.  Later,  when I heard that Cathy
Blight of Howell,  Michigan,  was at risk of losing her home just
before Christmas as a result of a libel suit filed against her by  a
dog dealer,  I contacted Elsie.  The Mitchells hired a bankruptcy
specialist attorney for Cathy.  They knew Cathy had two young
daughters.  One day several huge boxes arrived at the Blight home
addressed to the girls.  Elsie and John had bought huge stuffed
animals for the children.  The kids re-packed the stuffed toys and
re-opened them again and again.  And the Mitchells saved their home.”

Erich Klinghammer,  81, died on October 6,  2011.  Born in
Kassel,  Germany,  Klinghammer credited his German shepherd,  Edda,
with saving him from a house fire in his youth.  Emigrating to the
U.S. in 1951,  Klinghammer returned to Europe as a U.S. soldier,
stationed in Austria 1953-1955.   “In his first years in the U.S.,
Erich spotted his first wild wolves during a horseback ride across
the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska,”  recalled the German Wolf
Association.  “Later,  at the University of Chicago,”  where
Klinghammer also met ethologists Eckhard Hess and Konrad Lorenz,  “he
met a hand-reared wolf for the first time and was impressed at how
different the wolf was from all the dogs he knew.”   Klinghammer
earned a Ph.D. with a dissertation on the imprinting of mourning
doves and African collared doves,  but developed ornithosis and
turned to studying wolves.  He acquired his first two wolves in 1972,
and founded his Wolf Park research-and-education center,  currently
housing 14 wolves,  in 1976.  Klinghammer later added a herd of bison
and studied the interaction of the wolves and bison,  who could see
each other but were physically separated.  For more than 25 years
Klinghammer spoke out often against keeping wolves and wolf hybrids
as pets.  His ashes were spread in the bison pasture.

Marti Kheel,  63, died of leukemia on November 20,  2011 in
New York City.  Born in New York City,  though she lived most of her
life in the San Francisco Bay area,  Kheel recalled that she
“performed her first protest on behalf of animals when she turned her
back to the camera in a family photograph that excluded her beloved
cat,  Booty-tat.”  Becoming a vegetarian in 1973,  Kheel in 1977
joined the Animal Liberation Collective,  an early Montreal animal
rights group,  while earning an M.A. in sociology at McGill
University.  Relocating to California in 1982,  Kheel and Tina Frisco
cofounded Feminists for Animal Rights,  which established a national
presence for about 20 years,  but became legally dormant in 2004.
Completing a Ph.D. in religious studies at the Graduate Theological
Union in Berkeley,  California,  Kheel was in recent years  a
visiting scholar in the Department of Environmental Science,  Policy,
and Management at the University of California in Berkeley.  Her
Ph.D. thesis evolved into her 2008 book,  Nature Ethics: An
Ecofeminist Perspective.  Among the many people Kheel influenced was
her first cousin,  Cass Sunstein,  six years younger,  who with
Martha C. Nussbaum in 2004 co-edited the anthology Animal Rights:
Current Debates & New Directions.  Sunstein has since 2009 headed the
Office of Information & Regulat-ory Affairs,  a senior position
within the Barack Obama administration.  Recalled ANIMAL PEOPLE
president Kim Bartlett,  “Marti and I were at Green Party conventions
in 1987 and 1988.  With the late Henry Spira,  and longtime Feminists
for Animal Rights board member Batya Bauman,  we co-authored an
animal rights political agenda for the future that is still being
posted online and critiqued.”

Nguyen Thao Anh,  11, on October 16,  2011 in Lao Cai,
Vietnam,  offered sugar cane to a chained circus elephant who had
been teased by other children.  The elephant picked her up,  slammed
her to the ground,  and fatally trampled her,  Vietnam Circus
Federation deputy director Nguyen Xuan Quang told Agence France-Press.

Joao Chupel Primo,  55, a car repairman in Itaituba,  Para
state,  Brazil,  was shot by two gunmen inside his repair shop on
October 20,  2011,   just hours after reporting illegal logging in
the Riozinho do Anfriso reserve and Trairao national forest.  Primo
was the eighth opponent of illegal logging in the region to be
assassinated since May 2011.