Category: Obituaries

OBITUARIES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1994:

Isabelle Gronert, 79, died
September 21 in New York City. Gronert
worked tirelessly for the rights of animals,
from demonstrating against the infamous cat
experiments at the American Museum of
Natural History in 1976 right up to her death.
She wrote letters, worked the telephone,
marched, raised funds, and found homes for
abandoned animals at her own expense. The
British-born World War II D-Day veteran
sought no recognition, only justice for ani-
mals. And she had the perfect answer to the
accusatory, “Well, what do you do for
humans?” often hurled at her while tabling:
she was a longtime volunteer at Roosevelt
Hospital, working with AIDS patients.
Gronert’s love extended to other living things,
including flowers, trees, and plants. She was
a popular member of the New York
Horticultural Society, and often lectured on
the care of African violets. Her own collection
of those beautiful plants in the window of her
home reminded visitors of an English cottage,
complete with a friendly offering of a cup of
tea. Her three feline companions, Max,
Jasmin, and Topsy, will be cared for by a
close friend. Gronert’s kindness, strength, and
determination were an inspiration to all those
lucky enough to know and love her. She will
be missed by many, but her spirit will always
be with us.
––Linda Petrie

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OBITUARIES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:

British film director James Hill, 75,
died October 9. Hill’s most successful produc-
tions were Born Free, 1966, starring Virginia
McKenna and Bill Travers, and the 1971 ver-
sion of Black Beauty.
Arlie Coplin, 40, a longtime office
volunteer for the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society, died August 25 of skin cancer. Born
in Huntington Beach, California, Coplin lived
most of his life in nearby Fallbrook, where
after a stint as a Navy flight mechanic he
became a building contractor. “Until the day
he died,” the Sea Shepherd Log memorialized,
“Arlie was most concerned that he was leaving
the world with the future existence of whales
uncertain. He loved them desperately and he
regretted dying without having gone to sea
himself to protect them. We had been trying to
get Arlie on board as a crew member for a long
time,” but logistics interfered. Coplin’s sur-
vivors included his mother Helen Coplin, and
sisters Lois Sontag and Karen Valek.

OBITUARIES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

Dallas Pratt, M.D., 79, died May
20 at his home in Garrison, New York. In an
autobiography authored for the journal
Between The Species, Pratt recalled joining a
society for the prevention of cruelty at age 9,
and giving up hunting at age 22 in 1938, but
noted that he did not otherwise concern him-
self with animals until after he acquired his
first pet, a Scottie dog he named Maud, after
his nanny, in 1966. Within a few months
Pratt helped prosecute the director of the near-
by Hampton Animal Shelter for cruelty; in
1969, noting a paucity of documentation
about animal issues in advocacy literature, he
and friends founded the humane education
group Argus Archives, recently reorganized
as Two Mauds Inc. and now administrated by
Ron Scott. In recent years the group has
focussed upon documenting the activities of
the animal rights movement. Through Argus
Archives, Pratt published two books, Painful
Experiments on Animals (1976) and
Alternatives to Pain in Experiments on
Animals (1980). In 1981 the Animal Welfare
Institute honored him with the Albert
Schweitzer Medal for lifetime achievement in
animal protection.

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OBITUARIES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

George Huebner, 51, died
of cancer on May 26 at
home in Houston.
Huebner became aware of
humane issues as curator of
laboratory animals from
1961 until 1977 at the now
defunct Texas Research
Institute for Mental
Sciences. That job over-
lapped 22 years as head of
the veterinary paramedic program at Houston
Community College. In 1973 Huebner
cofounded Citizens for Animal Protection,
serving on the board from 1977 on as it grew to
run three Houston-area shelters.

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OBITUARIES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

Aida Fleming, founder of the
Kindness Club, died on January 25 at age 97.
A longtime animal rescuer, inspired by the
example of Albert Schweitzer, Fleming began
the Kindness Club in 1959 with an essay contest
for school children. The pledge children take to
join has for many become a lifelong creed: “I
promise to be kind to animals, as well as peo-
ple, and to speak and act in defense of all help-
less living creatures.” Eulogized Paul Watson
of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, “My
brothers, sisters, and I were greatly influenced
by the Kindness Club. I attribute what I do,
and the fact that my brothers and sisters are also
anti-hunting, anti-fur coats, and very pro-ani-
mals, to the fact that we were all members of
the Kindness Club.” [The Kindness Club oper-
ates from 65 Brunswick Street, Frederickton,
New Brunswick, Canada E3B 1G5.]

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OBITUARIES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

Actor Bill Travers, 72, who played
Kenyan game warden George Adamson in the 1966
film Born Free, died March 31 in Dorking,
England. Travers and Virginia McKenna, his wife of
37 years, endowed the Born Free Foundation, which
works to improve the care of captive wildlife.
Travers and McKenna also served as celebrity board
members for the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal, named
after the lioness featured in Born Free. “The animals
have lost a true friend,” said Elsa-USA president
Don Rolla.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Toledo Edison Company stationary
engineer Kris Kohn, 41, of Toledo, Ohio,
died February 17 of a heart attack, shortly after
he and off-duty fire Lt. Eric Renzhofer spent
two hours rescuing 132 canvasback ducks who
were trapped in the East Toledo generating
plant’s water intake. “Kris had raised Canada
geese, pigeons, and a rabbit. We have three
Labrador retrievers, whom he loved very
much,” his widow Pamela wrote to ANIMAL
PEOPLE. “He also was a beekeeper. He
would get very mad when someone mistreated
an animal or child. He loved his children and
nieces, and is very deeply missed.”

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OBITUARIES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Muriel, The Lady Dowding, died
in England on November 21, 1993, at age
85. A long series of strokes had left her con-
fined to a nursing home, isolated from friends
and deeply impoverished after giving most of
her fortune to animal causes. Her chief regret
late in life, she told ANIMAL PEOPLE
publisher Kim Bartlett, was that she was “no
longer able to do very much for the animals.”
A lifelong vegetarian, Theosophist,
and spiritualist, after her mother’s example,
the Lady Dowding argued in her 1980 autobi-
ography, The Psychic LIfe of Muriel, the
Lady Dowding, that enlightenment cannot be
achieved without sensitivity to animals. She
was long active in the White Eagle Lodge, a
British/American religious group with special
concern for animals.

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