Obituaries

“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

Judy Dynnick,  61,  of Rives Junction,  Michigan,  died on May 22,  2012 after a struggle of more than a year and a half against
liver cancer and other health problems.  Long involved in animal, environmental,  and feminist advocacy,  Dynnick in 2004 formed Jackson County Volunteers Against Pound Seizure to continue a struggle against the sale of shelter animals for laboratory use that was begun in 1960 by Jackson Animal Protective Association founder Dorothy Reynolds.  Reynolds died in 2001 at age 86.   The major buyer of the shelter animals for resale to labs,  Fred Hodgins of Hodgins Kennels in Howell,  Michigan, had won libel verdicts against two activists who attacked his business in letters to newspapers,  and won a reduction of a USDA penalty of $13,500 for alleged violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act to just $325,  plus reimbursement of attorneys’ fees of $155,385.  But Dynnick persisted.  On June 18, 2006 the Jackson County commissioners voted 10-1 to stop selling animals to Hodgins.  Dynnik credited her predecessors for their groundwork,  thanked attorney Allie Phillips and psychologist Bob Walsh for legal and scientific support,  and moved on to her next campaign,  the County Animal Shelter Wall Fund.  In November 2010 Dynnick thanked “everyone who contributed to the fund to get our Jackson County animal shelter walls completed,”  in place of the
previous chain link fencing.  “Even the isolation area is now completed,”  Dynnick wrote.  “This will help to keep employees safe
and greatly reduce disease transmission.  It is also much quieter at the shelter,  because the dogs can’t see each other.”  Wrote Aggie Monfette of Royal Oak,  Michigan,  “I was never fortunate enough to meet Judy face to face, but we became very close friends through the phone and e-mail. The animals have lost one of their best champions and I have lost a wonderful friend.” Read more

Obituaries

“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

 F. Barbara Orlans died on June 18,  2010.  ANIMAL PEOPLE learned of her death on April 5,  2012.  A noted biomedical researcher,  Orlans in a 1964 letter to Science endorsed the then just introduced Laboratory Animal Welfare Act,  the forerunner of today’s Animal Welfare Act.  She served for the rest of her life on the scientific committee for the Animal Welfare Institute.  Educated in England, Orlans “conducted research at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the National Institutes of Health,”  recalled AWI president Cathy Liss.  “In 1984 she founded the Scientists Center for Animal Welfare. From 1989 until her death,  she was a senior research fellow and assistant professor at the Georgetown University Kennedy Institute of Ethics.”  Orlans’ books included Animal Care from Protozoa to Small Mammals,  In the Name of Science:  Issues In Responsible Animal Experimentation,  Applied Ethics in Animal Research (with John Gluck and Tony Dipasquale),  and The Human Use of Animals:  Case Studies in Ethical Choice (with Tom Beauchamp,  Rebecca Dresser and David Morton). Read more

“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

Lawrence Anthony,  61,  died on March 2,  2012 in Johannesburg,  South Africa.  Following his father into the insurance industry,  Anthony later turned to real estate development.  In the mid-1990s Anthony bought the 5,000-acre Thula Thula private wildlife reserve in Zululand,  founded in 1911.  Anthony “added luxury accommodations and fine dining to attract tourists eager to see wildlife close up,”  recalled Douglas Martin of The New York Times. Anthony also added vegetarian cooking classes to the Thula Thula program of entertainment and education,  and made Thula Thula the headquarters for his own conservation charity,  Earth Organization. In 1999 Anthony took in nine elephants who were slated for culling. This episode informed The Elephant Whisperer:  My Life With the Herd in the African Wild (2009),  co-authored with his brother-in-law Graham Spence.  Anthony in 2005 and 2008 helped lead opposition to elephant culling in Kruger National Park.  But Anthony was best known for making his way to Baghdad after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in May 2003,  to help the starving animals of the Baghdad Zoo.  Read more

Obituaries

“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

Nick Santino,  47, a New York City soap opera actor who had performed in All My Children and Guiding Light,  on January 24,  2010 had his pit bull Rocco euthanized,  after receiving veterinary advice that the dog was aggressive,  and although New York City has more resources for retraining and rehoming pit bulls than any other city, with the possible exception of Los Angeles.  Less than 24 hours later Santino killed himself with an overdose of sleeping pills, attributing his suicide to guilt over killing Rocco.  Other residents of the building in which Santino owned a condominium had reportedly complained about Rocco,  who according to building rules could not ride in the main elevators and was not allowed to be left in Santino’s apartment alone for more than nine hours.  Santino reportedly attributed Rocco’s behavior to his own depression. Read more