From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

H. Jay Dinshah, 66, who founded
the American Vegan Society in 1960 and
headed it ever since, assisted by his wife
Freya and other family members, died on
June 8 from a heart attack at the AVS office
in Malaga, New Jersey. Congenital heart
disease was reportedly common on both sides
of his family. Recalled S. Joseph
Hagenmayer of the Philadelphia Inquirer,
“Dinshah was raised as lacto-vegetarian from
birth and homeschooled by his parents, the
late Dinshah P. Ghadali and Irene Grace
Hoger Dinshah,” but became a strict vegan
after visiting a Philadelphia slaughterhouse at
age 23. “His ethic of reverence for life was
expounded through writings and essays and
crusades that took him around the world,”
Hagenmayer continued. “He helped organize
conventions, including the 1975 World
Vegetarian Congress at the University of
Maine in Orono, that played significant roles
in the development of the vegetarian and
vegan movements.” Dinshah was a secondgeneration
vegetarian crusader: Dinshah
Ghadali, an Indian-born Parsi mystic, physician,
lawyer, aviator, and inventor, gave up
hunting and meat-eating at age 18, and went
on to practice and advocate vegetarianism
until his death at 92.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

Major, 33, the oldest polar bear in
captivity, was euthanized on June 3 due to
liver cancer. Born in Siberia, Major was captured
in 1966, imported to the Worcester
Ecotarium in 1971, and transferred to the
Stone Zoo in Boston in 1975. The thenseverely
substandard zoo was closed in 1990
and the animals dispersed. “Public outcry
would not allow him to be euthanized, even
though there was no place for him to go,”
recalled his longtime friend and zoo volunteer
Carol Rocci, of Medford, Massachusetts.
Major’s presence and popularity eventually
won funding to reopen and improve the zoo.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

Ronald Lockley, 96, died on April 12 in Auckland, New Zealand. Lockley did his first nature study while recovering from appendicitis at age 19, but only began to make it his career after he and his first wife Doris tried to raise chinchillas for fur on an offshore island in 1926, failing because they couldn’t catch any. Stuck with a 21-year lease on the island, Lockley wrote the first three of his more than 60 successful nature books plus the screenplay for the 1934 Academy Award-winning documentary T h e Private Life of the Gannet. Lockley’s opus, however, was The Private Life of the Rabbit (1964), acknowledged by Richard Adams as the factual reference which enabled him to write his 1972 best-selling novel W a t e r s h i p Down. Lockley emigrated to New Zealand in 1977 with his third wife, after arranging for his former island home and an estate he later owned on the mainland to become nature reserves. Adams in later life became a curmudgeonly rabbit-hater, but Lockley was last in the public eye as an outspoken critic of the release of rabbit calicivirus to reduce the New Zealand feral rabbit population. It was needlessly cruel, he said, and would not lastingly lower the numbers of rabbits.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

Bart the Bear, 23, the 9’6”, 1,500-pound ursine star of more than a dozen Hollywood films, was euthanized on May 10 after a two-year bout with cancer. Bart appeared in Windwalker, The Edge, White Fang, The Bear, The Great Outdoors, and Legends of the Fall, performing especially well with Anthony Hopkins, said to trainers Lynne and Richard Seus, who bought him from a zoo as a five-pound cub in 1978.

Michael, 27, male companion of Koko the signing gorilla at the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside, California, died on April 19 from a sudden heart attack. Like Koko, Michael learned and used American Sign Language, but was better known for his painting. Born in the Cameroun, he was acquired by language researcher Francine Patterson in 1976 as a potential mate for Koko––but though they became close friends, Koko rejected him as a suitor.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

Ryszard Karczewski, DVM, 43, of Warsaw, Poland, was mauled on March 13 while trying to tranquilize one of three Bengal tigers who escaped from the Korona Circus. Already fatally injured, he was then accidentally shot in the chest by police who were trying to save him. The tiger, at large for about two hours, was also killed. The other two tigers were recaptured earlier. The R z e c z p o s p o l i t a daily newspaper two days later received an e-mail from a previously unknown group calling itself the Polish League for Protection of Animals, which claimed it had released the tigers and added that it would release animals from circuses or zoos once a week. The same perpetrators are believed to be responsible for releasing four polar bears from the Nuremburg Zoo in Germany on March 30. All four bears were shot dead after tranquilization attempts failed.

Naren Saikia, a guard and tiger census worker at Kaziranga National Park, near Guwahati, India, was fatally gored by a mother rhino on March 16, who apparently mistook him for a threat to her calf.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

Donner, 7, German shepherd companion to Humane Society of Central Oregon director Kimball Lewis, 38, was allegedly stolen from Lewis’ yard in Deschutes County, Oregon, near Bend, toward dawn on April 12; was shot in the head; and was then returned to the yard and hanged from a juniper bush. Police believe the killing was either an act of revenge or attempted intimidation of Lewis, who is known as an aggressive cruelty investigator, and has been involved in many controversial cases. The Oregon Humane Society posted a reward of $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator(s), and the reward fund grew to $15,000 within 24 hours. Lewis was previously director of the Greenhill Humane Society in Eugene. Donner, his constant companion, came to work with him every day.

Cero, 3, a German shepherd police dog, was fatally shot on March 25 in Jefferson, Ohio, while attempting to subdue one Levi Ridenour. Ridenour had fatally ambushed a man named Walter Olsen as Olsen took a dawn walk. Ridenour was still carrying a concealed firearm, unknown to police, when Cero intervened. Ridenour was killed in an ensuing shootout. Three hundred police officers and 70 fellow police dogs from around Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and West Virginia attended a full police funeral for Cero, who also received an unprecedented human-style obituary in the Ashtabula Star Beacon. Cero shared the home of Ashtabula County sheriff’s deputy William Niemi and family. “He was as much a police officer as any of us,” fellow deputy Joseph Niemi told Michael Sangiacomo of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Cero sensed the danger, and died saving my brother’s life. For that, I thank him. He also saved other people’s lives. We don’t know who else might have died if not for his sacrifice.” The North Coast Humane Society of Cleveland and the Public Animal Welfare Society donated bulletproof vests in his memory to the two surviving Astabula County police dogs.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

Ruth Frankel, 87, died on March 3 of leukemia at her apartment in Newport Beach, California, comforted to the last by Phanni, a formerly feral cat she had rescued, along with five kittens, from the Balboa Theater. Frankel had reportedly battled leukemia for 40 years. Teaching English and history at Huntington Beach High School for 31 years, Frankel founded the Animal Assistance League of Orange County upon retiring in 1973. The organization “now has kennel capacity for 20 animals, a roster of hundreds of volunteers, a low-cost spay/neuter program, and an $1,800-a-month budget from private donations,” wrote Elaine Gale of the Los Angeles Times. The current president is Jackie Keener.

Bonnie Findlay, 79, founder of the Bambi Bird and Wildlife Sanctuary in Little Ranches, Florida, died on March 4. A former veterinary surgical nurse, Findlay “for three decades ran the 30-acre wildlife hospital and rehabilitation center, aided by her halfbrother Wally,” recalled Neil Santaniello of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. “For many years it was the only wildlife rehab center in Palm Beach County.” Aiding as many as 700 animals a year, the center faltered after Wally Findlay “died on February 4, 1997, at age 72, in a deliberately set fire on the grounds,” Santaniello continued, adding that “Ms. Findlay and helpers brought it back to life.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

Leo II, 12, African lion mascot of the University of North Alabama football team, died on March 1 while anesthetized for a medical check at Auburn University. His death provoked discussion not only of the propriety of using wild animals as quasicheerleaders, but also of Auburn academic standards, after the Birmingham News bannered “Leo II dies during exam at AU.”

Maverick, four, German shepherd police dog for the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department in Santa Rosa, California, trained after rescue from a local pound, was killed on February 11 when struck by a car during hot pursuit of two suspects who allegedly discarded a loaded handgun and a half pound of cocaine in their flight. Despite his fatal injuries, Maverick continued the chase until called off by handler Theodore Van Bebber.

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