From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2009:
Socks, 18, the White House cat throughout the Bill Clinton
administration, died on February 20, 2009. Originally kept by
former President Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, who adopted Socks from
a litter born in her piano teacher’s yard when Clinton was governor
of Arkansas, Socks had lived with Bill Clinton’s former secretary
Betty Currie in Hollywood, Maryland since the Clinton family left
the White House in early 2001. After Socks and a newly acquired
chocolate retriever named Buddy had several altercations on the White
House grounds, then-First Lady Hilary Clinton in 1998 published a
book of children’s letters to the animals entitled Dear Socks, Dear
Buddy. Bill Clinton likened trying to achieve a truce between Socks
and Buddy to seeking peace in the Middle East, a problem Hilary now
confronts as Secretary of State.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2009:
Paul Harvey, 90, died on February 28, 2009 in Phoenix,
Arizona. Beginning in radio journalism while still in high school in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harvey met and married Lynne Cooper, whom he
called Angel, while working for St. Louis radio station KXOK in
1940. She became his chief researcher until her death in 2008. They
were later joined by their son, Paul Harvey Jr. At peak in the
1970s, their broadcasts reached more than 24 million listeners via
more than 1,200 American Broadcasting Company affiliates plus 400
Armed Forces Radio stations. In addition, 300 newspapers carried
Paul Harvey’s syndicated column. “Paul and Angel were two of the best
friends that animal protection and the Humane Society of the U.S.
ever had,” recalled HSUS president Wayne Pacelle. “The same must be
said of Paul Harvey Jr. The September 1956 issue of HSUS News
records that Harvey reported on the activity of the House
Agricultural Com-mittee in regard to humane slaughter,” during the
campaign for the Humane Slaughter Act, passed in 1958. “He also
appealed for an end to slaughterhouse cruelties in his newspaper
column,” Pacelle continued.

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