Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

Ed Piukowsky, 52, died of a heart attack on July 9, 2005,
at home in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The son of a police dog
handler, Piukowsky and his wife Bonnie Lanzen-dorfer Piukowsky
founded the Jollyman Animal Sanctuary in 2002. Blairsville Dispatch
reporter Jeff Himler in April 2005 listed the residents as “16 dogs,
50 cats, six chickens, three goats, a dozen each of geese and
ducks, two peafowl, a rabbit and a parrot.” Recalled Dogs Deserve
Better anti-chaining group founder Tammy Grimes, “Ed was very
supportive of me and my work, and had me speak at their fundraisers
each of the past three years. The first time was my first time ever
speaking, and I was so nervous I thought I’d die. I spoke for a
whole 30 seconds, but it was enough to get me past the point of
trying. He told me each year, ‘See, I knew you were going to go
far, didn’t I tell you that?’ He was so proud of me and the
progress we have made.”

Shana Alexander, 79, died on June 23, 2005 in Hermosa
Beach, California. The daughter of composer Milton Ager and Variety
and PM film critic Cecilia Ager, Alexander broke into journalism as
a PM copygirl, was promoted to reporter, and in 1951 was hired as
the first woman staff writer for Life. She left Life to edit
McCall’s, 1969-1971, then debated Washington Star columnist James
J. Kilpatrick weekly on the “Point/ Counterpoint” segment of CBS 60
Minutes, 1975-1979. Alexander for the next decade wrote books
exploring murder and gender issues. Only a 1962 Life cover feature
and her last book, The Astonishing Elephant (2000) indulged her
lifelong interest in elephants– but Alexander at age 15 had already
made an enduring contribution to pro-elephant activism. Upstaged by
Pearl Harbor and the outbreak of World War II, the December 1941
release of the Walt Disney animated classic Dumbo appeared to be a
failure until Cecilia Ager took Alexander with her to see it, and
moved by her response, saved it with a rave review. “Dumbo is the
nicest, kindest Disney yet,” Ager wrote. As The Astonishing
Elephant documents, albeit with only one reference to Dumbo, it was
also in many respects shockingly realistic. Composer Paul McCartney
in April 2004 acknowledged seeing Dumbo as a child as one of the
formative experiences contributing to his longtime involvement in
animal advocacy.

Simon Hutton, 39, son of Free the Bears Fund founder Mary
Hutton, was hit by a car on June 22, 2005 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia,
and died two days later without regaining consciousness. As Cambodia
project director for Free The Bears Fund, “He was in charge of
building a vet clinic and working with the bear keepers at our
sanctuary in the Phnom Tamao Zoological Gardens & Wildlife Rescue
Centre,” Mary Hutton told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “He had been in Cambodia
since the end of January 2005. Simon was a gentle, warm-hearted
person who sat up all night and bottle fed a baby sun bear who was
dehydrated and listless. Simon was also responsible for getting Free
The Bears Fund started. One evening in 1993 he yelled, “Mum you
have to see this on TV!” I saw a little bear banging his head
against a bar of a cage, and that was the first I knew of bears in
bile farms–it went from there.”

Janet Orio, 51, dog warden for Windsor Locks, Connecticut
since 1996, called paramedics to her home on June 2, 2005 after
experiencing a medical emergency, but died before they arrived.
Orio had on May 31, 2005 persuaded the Windsor Locks board of
selectmen to fund construction of a new animal shelter.

Julia Palmer-Stoll, 21, who played the role of Simone in
the German TV series Marienhof, was killed by a car on June 10 while
trying to rescue a hedgehog from the highway between Dachau and
Munich.

Tobias Ndhlovu, 32, a Zimbab-wean “minder” at the Knysna
Elephant Park near Cape Town, South Africa, was on June 22 crushed
to death by a 17-year-old bull elephant named Harry. Describing
Ndhlovu as “the most gentle, loving, soft-spoken man,” park owner
Lisette Withers said he “was walking through high grass, when he
apparently tripped. Harry went down to pick him up. Elephants use
their tusks as a forklift. Harry has a huge forehead, the length of
Tobias’ body. He did not fling him or use his trunk; there was no
aggression. It was like he was trying to lift him.”

Lee Tsai-chin, a.k.a. Chen Chin-tsai, 41, a 20-year bear
keeper at the Leofoo Safari Park in Hsinchu, Taiwan, was on July 5
found still alive but fatally mauled in a 16-year-old brown bear’s
enclosure. He had apparently entered the enclosure to feed the bear,
in vioation of zoo policy. A fence painter was killed in a similar
accident at the same zoo in 2004, after apparently taking a shortcut
through a lion habitat.

Mary S. Nash, 56, died of lung cancer on July 1, 2005 in
Dallas, Texas. Moving to Kaufman, a Dallas suburb, in 1987, Nash
found herself living near one of the largest U.S. horse
slaughterhouses. “In 2003,” recalled Dallas Morning News staff
writer David Renfrow, “Nash teamed up with the Texas Humane
Legislation Network to defeat legislation that would have legalized
the operation of equine slaughterhouses in Texas, which currently
operate under federal laws that they say supercede state law. Nash
continued to campaign against horse slaughter until her death.”

Bhu Dev Chakraborty, 41, a forest guard since 1985 at Orang
National Park near Mangaldai, India, was killed by a tiger in early
July while on night patrol. He left a widow and two young children.

Kate Tetley, a cat rescue contact for the Louisiana SPCA,
was killed in a July 5 fire at her home near Slidell. Fourteen cats
and a dog died of smoke inhalation and burns, St. Tammany Parish
Department of Animal Services director Brent Robbins, DVM told Chris
Kirkham of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, but 30 animals were saved.

Lark Fran Bennett, 45, a Louisiana SPCA dog groomer and
cofounder of the annual Barkus Parade fundraiser for New Orleans
animal charities, was shot to death with another woman in
Chalmette, Louisiana, on July 11, 2005, reportedly by a third
woman who knew them both.

Kathleen Ann Coppolino, 33, a People-Pet Partnership
volunteer driver, was killed on July 23, 2005 in a fiery
five-vehicle crash caused when an SUV driven by James Howard Jr.,
42, jumped a guardrail and collided almost head-on with Coppolino’s
vehicle, a van belonging to the Philadelphia Animal Care & Control
Association. Coppolino was returning to PACCA after delivering a
load of animals to a PETsMART adoption day. Howard was also killed.
His girlfriend and one-year-old daughter escaped injury, but three
other people were hurt.

Claire Simmons Allan, 76, died on June 9, 2005, in Rock
Hill, South Carolina. A former opera singer, she and her late
husband Bill Allan endowed the Claire Simmons Samson Allan Memorial
Scholarship in Moral Philosophy at North Carolina State University.
“Over the years Claire practiced her own version of animal rescue,”
recalled former NCSU philosopher department chair and animal rights
philosopher Tom Regan. “If she happened to see a neglected dog,”
she would first issue a warning, and then, if the dog was not
better looked after, “find an opportune time to ‘liberate’ the
abused animal, leaving a note behind that warned against ever having
another animal to care for, signed by ‘Mrs. Robin Hood.’ She was
never caught.”