From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Emily the cow, 10, who escaped from a Massachusetts
slaughterhouse in 1995 and was eventually purchased by Sherborn Peace
Abbey founders Meg and Lewis Randa, died on March 31 from cancer.
Boston Globe correspondent Benjamin Gedan remembered her as “an
inarticulate but persuasive spokeswoman for vegetarianism.” Added
Meg Randa, “It’s easy to go to the grocery, but Emily put a face on
that packet of beef.”

Randy the dolphin, 11, “so-called because of his attraction
to women wearing rubber wetsuits,” according to Martin Lea of the
Dorset Echo, was reportedly hit and killed by a boat in Weymouth
Harbor, England, on April 3, 11 months after dolphin rescuer Ric
O’Barry warned that such an accident would happen and tried
unsuccessfully to steer him back to his former home near Cherbourg,
France, where he was known as Georges.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Franklin M. Loew, 63, died on April 22 after a three-year
battle with a rare form of neuroendocrinal liver cancer. “I come to
work but go home early because I tire out,” Loew e-mailed to ANIMAL
PEOPLE on February 2. “I’m in a clinical trial of thalidomide, of
all things, which has been shown to have anti-cancer properties,”
Loew added, seeming to enjoy the idea that he was himself now a lab
animal, participating in one of the voluntary trials of drugs in
terminal human patients that he had often mentioned as an accessible
option for “reducing, refining, and replacing” the numbers of
animals used in biomedical research.

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2003–

Roadway, a semi-feral cat known to many as “the cat who
plays with deer,” and famously photographed in an encounter with a
wild turkey, was rescued by the Rocky Mountain Alley Cat Alliance in
1990 from a Denver warehouse after he arrived as a stowaway on a
Roadway truck from Ohio. On March 19, 2003, one day after 51
inches of wet snow blanketed his habitat, Roadway developed a
urinary tract blockage. Friends and neighbors hauled him one and a
half miles by snowshoe and 20 miles by highway to a veterinary
clinic, where after successful surgery he pulled a catheter from his
leg and bled to death. –Audrey Boag

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2003:

Fred Rogers, 74, died from cancer on
February 27 at his home in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. A strict vegetarian, Rogers
taught on his television show Mister Rogers’
Neighborhood that “True wisdom is never separate
from compassion.” Rogers debuted in children’s
television in 1954 as a puppeteer for The
Children’s Corner, aired by WQED-Pittsburgh.
Ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1963,
Rogers was assigned to continue working in TV.
Later in 1963 Rogers developed a 15-minute show
called Misterogers for the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation. He returned the show to Pittsburgh
in 1966, and expanded it into Mister Rogers’
Neighborhood for the Eastern Educational Network.
It was picked up by National Educational
Television in 1968, which later became the
Public Broadcasting Service. Rogers produced
more than 1,700 episodes. He retired due to
declining health in 2000, but returned to the
air briefly in 2001 to reassure children about
the goodness of the world and their ability to
make it better after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  March 2003:

Dolly,  6,  the sheep who was the world’s first cloned
mammal,  was euthanized due to an incurable lung disease and chronic
arthritis  on February 14 at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian,
Scotland,  her lifelong home.  Produced from an udder cell from a
six-year-old ewe,  Dolly was born in July 1996 and named after the
singer Dolly Parton.  At age two she showed signs of premature aging,
and by her death she appeared to be twice her chronological age.
Similar effects have now been seen in all mammals cloned to date.
Researchers now believe that cloned animals are the biological age of
the cells they were made from–a major setback to the theory that
cloning might enable humans to practice self-perpetuation,  as each
clone would in effect be born at the same biological age as the cell
source,  and all would reach elderly decrepitude at the same time.
Dolly’s death “highlights more than ever the foolishness of those who
want to legalize human reproductive cloning,” said Alan Colman,  one
of the scientists whose work produced her.

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  March 2003:

Kalpana Chawla,  41,  remembered in
Indian newspaper obituaries right after mention
that she was an astronaut as “A devout Hindu and
fourth generation vegetarian,”  was killedon
February 1 along with all six of her flightmates
when the space shuttle Columbia exploded over
Texas during re-entry into the Earth’s
atmosphere.  Born to Pakistani immigrant parents
in Haryana state,  India,  Chawla married flight
instructor Jean Pierre Harrison soon after
starting aerospace engineering studies at the
University of Texas at Arlington.  She lived in
Texas for the rest of her life,  but maintained
her links to India as well.  Haryana residents
saluted her first spaceflight in 1997 with a
torchlight parade that they hoped she could see
from orbit.

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

Rusty, 35, a 308-pound orangutan born at the Chaffee Zoo in
Fresno in 1967 and donated to the San Francisco Zoo in 1968 by the
late Carroll Soo Hoo, died on January 8. Rusty sired a daughter
named Violet, after Mrs. Carroll Soo-Hoo, with his former companion
Josephine. Rusty is survived and mourned by his companion of the
past several years, Lipz, 20.

Shuzee, 53, the oldest chimpanzee in Japan, born at the
Hamburg Zoo in Germany but brought to the Tennoji Zoo in Osaka in
1951, died on January 6. The oldest chimp on record was Jimmy, 55,
of the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, New York, who died in 1985.

Charlie Brown, 11, a dog whose annual birthday parties
raised about $4,000 for the Animal Refuge Center of North Fort Myers,
Florida, was euthanized due to incurable cancer on January 6. He
was the pet of Danielle Weiner, owner of three local ice cream
stores.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

Edward J. Blotzer Jr., 78, died on November 28, 2002 in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A retired locomotive engineer and local
newspaper editor, Blotzer served on the board of the animal rescue
group Animal Friends from 1960 until 1997. In 1970 Blotzer and his
late wife Katherine, who owned a printing business, founded the
Animal Care & Welfare SPCA. Claiming an 85% conviction rate in
prosecuting cruelty cases, Blotzer was among the first humane
officers licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture after
it gained authority to regulate who could be a humane officer in
1994. He was also a founding member of Mobilization for Animals,
and an active supporter of many other animal advocacy groups, as
well as a frequent news source for ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2002:

Annelisa M. Kilbourne, DVM, 35, was killed in a light
plane crash on November 2 at the Lope Nature Preserve in Gabon,
Africa. Earning her veterinary degree from Tufts University in 1996,
Kilbourne worked in Malaysia for the Wildlife Conservation Society,
in Chicago for the Lincoln Park Zoo and Shedd Aquarium, and in
Borneo for the SOS Rhino project, before returning to the Wildlife
Conservation Society to investigate the impact of Ebola virus on wild
gorillas. Her work helped to establish that the spread of Ebola is
an important factor in the recent decline of gorilla populations,
and that eating poached gorillas is one way the deadly disease
spreads among humans.

Read more