Melya Kaplan's Blog

Many years ago, when I had just started the Animal Rights Club at Crossroads, one of my students announced that she wanted the club to protest a tug of war contest being held nearby between an elephant and a car. It was being staged as a publicity stunt to advertise the circus and the car. Ringling Brothers would supply the elephant.

That next Saturday, early on a hot June morning, we met in the parking lot with food, water, and large signs. An hour later a truck arrived, slowly pulling several long boxcars, and parked in the lot. Six men jumped out, each holding a long metal rod with a sharp steel crescent point at the top. The doors of the box cars opened and inside each one stood two elephants, chained by their feet to the floor. I froze. Brandishing the metal rods like a weapon, men began to take the elephants out one by one. All the elephant had to do was see the bull hooks, and she cowered. It was horrible. I knew how that elephant felt.

Suddenly I looked to my right. An elephant in the box car next to me was staring at me, piercing my eyes. In an instant I was just her gaze. There was no Melya. I snapped back. She turned away. She was being pulled off the truck...

My mentor and my friend. 

I don’t remember how I met Pat. I feel she has always been in my life.

She never tired of my incessant barrage of questions. Her answers were my classes. She was a brilliant teacher.

And every year when I was teaching Animal Rights, I would ask Pat and Ed to come to LA and speak to my classes. She never said no. I watched as kids sat in awe of her. She talked about things they had never considered. Suddenly they were hearing the truth and they knew it. Their old, unquestioned assumptions about elephants crumbled forever. Every kid Pat spoke to could never set foot in a circus or zoo again. They now knew the truth.

But that was only a part of Pat’s magic....