Aspin Hill Pet Cemetery
From Aspen Hill, Maryland, USA
Aspin Hill Pet Cemetery is a memorial park and place of interment. It is primarily a final resting place for beloved pets, yet human beings also are interred there.
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History
Richard C and Bertha T Birney established a kennel at this location to breed schnauzers. They attached their fame at producing champions in the breed with the name "Aspin", a famous kennel in England, and that fit right in with the local place name which was originally "Aspen" and later Aspen Hill.
The Birneys buried several of their own dogs at this location, and some of their neighbors asked if they could also inter their pets there. In August 1920, one J G Croun had their St Bernard dog's remains interred there.
In 1946, the property was sold to one Edgar Reubush, DVM, who sold the property in 1961 to one S. Alfred Nash, an embalmer by trade. (At the time of this writing it is unknown whether or not Mr Nash was associated with the Gate of Heaven Cemetery which is sited east across Georgia Avenue.)
Shapiro Legacy
In 1988, Dorothy M. Shapiro of Potomac MD bought the 8-acre cemetery for a mere $400,000, in concert with an unnamed group of other concerned citizens, in order to forestall possible development as a commercial property. She started looking for responsible management to take care of the place (Barr, Cameron W., "Pet Owners Grieving All Over Again: Cemetery Benefactor Takes Group to Court Over Shoddy Upkeep",B01, Washington Post, Jan 11, 2005, downloaded 2008 May 28).
"The PETA Years"
In 1988 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ("PETA") acquired the property from Ms Shapiro, making a promise to preserve the property as a pet cemetery in condition equal to or better than at the time of assumption of management.
PETA achieved international notoriety for the case of "the Silver Spring Monkeys", and in its newletter "PeTA Kids" (No. 3, Summer 1989, p. 6) Aspin Hill is described in the article "A Very Special Place" where "...animals can live without fear of people hurting or killing them." PETA suffered additional notoriety over an incident where perfectly healthy rabbits and roosters (1991) were slaughtered on the Aspin Hill grounds and additional controversy erupted, although not locally, when accountant Sam Alston testified in Nevada that PETA Executive Directory Kim Stallwood and Gary Bevestock had achieved personal financial gains by "shorting" the finances at Aspin Hill. There are unsubstantiated rumors that the notorious Animal Liberation Front occasionally used the place as a "safe house".
Eventually PETA decided to move out of Montgomery County. They began to work with Ms Shapiro to try to locate another group to act as caretaker.
Chesapeake Wildlife Sanctuary Inc.
In 1996, Ms Shapiro signed a deal with Dianne D. Pearce, who ran the Chesapeake Wildlife Sanctuary, Inc., allegedly as a non-profit organization, to operate and maintain Aspin Hill Pet Cemetery.
At one time highly regarded, Pearce's operations began to fall apart over the next decade.
In October 2004, failure to submit records caused an Anne Arundel judge to revoke Chesapeake's non-profit status in Maryland. Maryland's Department of Natural Resources had made a request for documentary support for continuation of a permit to rehabilitate wildlife, and no such documentary support was made in any acceptable form.
Continuing concerns over the use of the property were expressed by the board of directors of the Aspen Hill Civic Association, Inc., due to a general lack of maintenance and upkeep at the facility, which was becoming overgrown and which had a variety of vehicles stored on the grounds.
Ms Shapiro brought a court action seeking compensatory and punitive damages, and the case was eventually resolved by Judge DeLawrence Beard. A memorandum of opinion and order as of April 9 2007 found Dianne D Pearce, Chesapeake Wildlife Sanctuary, Inc., and vice-president Victor G. Riemer, to be in violation of a declaration of covenants and restrictions (Brachfeld, Melissa J., Gazette, April 18 2007, downloaded 2008 May 27).
The property was eventually transferred to the name of the Montgomery County Humane Society.
Montgomery County Humane Society
In September 2008, the Montgomery County Department of Housing and Code Enforcement inspected the various buildings at 13630 Georgia Avenue and issued a slew of code violations and condemned the buildings as unfit for human habitation (Hyslop, Margie, Another leader's departure shakes Humane Society, Critics see failures in running of animal shelter, Gazette, Sept 24, 2008, as downloaded 2008 Sept 25).
The property had been purchased by Ms Shapiro 1988 in order to forestall a proposed redevelopment of the property.
All of this takes place in the shadow of major internal power struggles in the Montgomery County Humane Society, and the departure of one J.C. Crist and others.
One Nicholas Gilman of Humane Logic, Inc. was brought on board to manage a transition between directors and board members of the Human Society, and he had this to say about the Aspin Hill Pet Cemetery: "I think that the Aspin Hill property is one that the organization is going to see value not as a pet cemetery but that might have value as an education center, but that has not been developed".
Ms Shapiro said: "Well I could have given it to someone else that I think could have worked it better," she said. "These last years it just went downhill and I hope to see it have better days." ([http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=318827&paper=70&cat=104 MCHS Interim Head Wades In: Aspin Hill Pet Cemetery may be part of the Montgomery County Humane Society's financial troubles, Stern, Aaron, Potomac Almanac, August 27 2008, downloaded 2008 Sept 26])
The Interred
Aspin Hill Pet Cemetery is the final resting place of many celebrity pets.
Notes
Deposition of Sam Alston, 27, 34-54, Berosini v. PETA. Case A276505 (District Court, Clark County, Nevada). See also "AnimalScam: The Beastly Abuse of Human Rights", Marquardt, Kathleen, Levine, Herbert M., LaRochelle, Mark
