Holly Cheever, DVM, 75: “In lieu of sending flowers, don’t eat meat”

Spay/neuter vet,  veterinary reformer,  expert witness,  & Mother-of-the-Year besides

NEW SCOTLAND,  New York—Holly Cheever,  DVM,  a leading light in animal care and advocacy for more than half a century,  and a longtime friend,  source,  and donor to ANIMALS 24-7,  “died on February 9,  2025,”  the Altamont Enterprise reported ten days later from Albany County,  New York,  “following a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.  She was 75.”

The news unfortunately took more than six months to reach ANIMALS 24-7,  resulting in a long belated obituary.

“Mary Helen ‘Holly’ Cheever arrived on Jan. 22, 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts — the youngest of three children born to Dan Sargent Cheever Sr. and Olivia Thorndike Cheever,”  recounted her son Jesse Sommer.

Lost her mother at age four

“She was raised Unitarian amidst an expansive yet closeknit community of cousins who trace their American roots back to Ezekial Cheever’s arrival to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s.

“Holly lost her mother to cancer in 1954,”  Sommer wrote for the Altamont Enterprise.  “She was only four years old at the time,  yet Holly carried with her this grief for the rest of her life.”

Graduating from Milton Academy in Milton,  Massachusetts,  Holly Cheever was admitted to Radcliffe in 1967,  the sister institution to Harvard University,  a decade before Harvard began admitting female undergraduate students.  Radcliffe students were,  however,  allowed to take courses at Harvard.

Anti-Vietnam War activist

Holly Cheever not only took pre-veterinary courses at Harvard from male faculty,  but became involved in anti-Vietnam War protests on the Harvard campus.

“On the night of April 8,  1969, “  David Sipress wrote for The New Yorker fifty years later,  “a group of antiwar Harvard students,  led by members of Students for a Democratic Society, marched to the home of Harvard’s president, Nathan Pusey,  and tacked a list of demands to his front door.

“The demands ranged from the abolition of R.O.T.C. on campus to lower rents for university-owned apartments in the city of Cambridge.

University Hall takeover

“The next morning,  April 9,  thirty supporters of the demands entered University Hall,  an administration building in Harvard Yard,  and forcibly ejected administrators and staff.  A photo of the protesters bodily carrying one dean out of the building made the front page of nearly every national newspaper.  Once the occupiers had taken over the building,  they chained the doors shut.  The Boston Globe reported that by evening there were more than five hundred people inside University Hall.”

Among them was 19-year-old Holly Cheever,  who at a 50-year reunion of the protesters on the Harvard campus recalled to Associated Press that “It was the end of writing letters to the editor and the beginning of being really active.  I’m really proud of our generation,”  she added.

Though the participants in the University Hall takeover were threatened with dire consequences,  Holly Cheever graduated summa cum laude,  and was then ranked first in her class upon graduation from the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in upstate New York,  where she spent the rest of her life.

The mystery of the cow who did not give milk

Beginning her veterinary career working with dairy cattle and horses,  a rarity as a female veterinarian then,  and even more so as a female large animal vet,  Holly Cheever was already a vegetarian,  who had misgivings about helping farmers to raise animals for slaughter.

On the other hand,  she reasoned,  those doomed animals maybe needed her care more than any others.  Hers might have been the only kind treatment they ever received.

A transformative experience for Holly Cheever,  she often narrated,  was “The mystery of the cow who had a calf but did not give milk.”

The calf was the cow’s fifth.  Each of her four previous calves had been taken from her immediately by the farmer and put into a veal crate so that the cow’s milk could be sold to humans.

“I was able to nurse all four of my babies”

That happened to the fifth calf,  too,  but this time there was no milk,  even though the cow appeared to be perfectly healthy.

Eleven days later the farmer discovered that the cow this time had birthed twins,  hiding and nursing one calf in the woods––whose fate,  when discovered,  was the same as that of the others.

Years later,  Holly Cheever encountered a similar case involving a cow named Clarabelle,  who birthed and hid a calf in tall grass after being taken to a sanctuary.

“There is a lot more going on behind those beautiful eyes than we humans have ever given [animals] credit for,”  Holly Cheever told Altamont Enterprise columnist Dennis Sullivan in 2015.

“As a mother who was able to nurse all four of my babies and did not have to suffer the agonies of losing my beloved offspring,  I feel her pain.”

“Moral ethos was vegetarianism”

Holly Cheever “met attorney Dean Sommer in 1978,”  continued son Jesse Sommer.  “They were married in June 1980,”  producing four children in just five years.

Jesse,  the first,  was born in July 1982,   followed by sisters Caitlin in December 1983,  Robin in January 1986,   and Brenna in March 1988.

Meanwhile,  Holly Cheever and Dean Sommer “moved to the town of New Scotland in 1983 and immediately set about establishing a wildlife preserve on property that they fashioned into a sanctuary for abused and neglected animals,”  Jesse Sommer recounted.

“Throughout her 40 years in Albany County, “  Jesse Sommer said,  “Holly’s home was shared by dogs,  cats,  guinea pigs,  goats,  horses,  cows,  ponies,  and chickens hatched in a slew of local grade-school classes.

“As a result of Holly’s interfaith marriage,”  Jesse Sommer added,  “the family observed both Christian and Jewish traditions,  yet its core moral ethos was and always will be vegetarianism. Her most fervent and desperate hope for humanity is that it ends the cultivation and consumption of sentient life.”

New York State Humane Association

During those same years Holly Cheever became involved in the Kingston-based New York State Humane Association,  founded in 1900 and still active.

With investigator Samantha Mullen and now retired New York state trooper Susan McDonough,  a frequent commenter on ANIMALS 24-7 articles,  Holly Cheever began trying to close several notorious upstate New York self-described “no-kill shelters”––none of them to be confused with no-kill shelters which adhere to accepted standards for humane animal care and fiscal accountability.

Arguably the worst was the Animals Farm Home at Ellenville,  run by Justin McCarthy,  age 68 in 1988,  when repeated New York State Humane Association raids finally drove McCarthy’s operation out of state.

“St. Francis of the Catskills”

Even after early closure attempts,  due to extreme animal neglect,  McCarthy was described by Newsweek in 1984 as “St. Francis of the Catskills,” and by Reader’s Digest  in 1986 as “a real-life Dr. Doolittle.”

Mullen (1939-2012),  McDonough,  and Holly Cheever were vilified by animal advocates and even by several national animal advocacy organizations for challenging McCarthy’s saintly reputation––but they were right.

McCarthy,  reported the New York Times files,  had actually been convicted of six armed robberies,  and later did public relations work for Cubans opposed to Fidel Castro.

McCarthy allegedly took in more than 1,000 dogs, 70 cats,  and various other animals between 1981 and 1987,  plus $500,000 in cash.

But the money vanished while most of the animals starved.

Of approximately 475 animals Mullen,  McDonough,  and Cheever reportedly discovered amid the remains of perhaps 200 more animals at the Animals Farm Home in November 1987,  about 175 were euthanized at the scene as irrecoverable.

Frequent hearing witness

Eventually serving as New York State Humane Association vice president,  Holly Cheever remained on the board for the rest of her life.

Holly Cheever testified in 1991 against New York state becoming the last U.S. state to lower the legal hunting age to 12,  for “The same reasons,”  she said,  that “we don’t allow 12-year-olds to vote and drive a car.  These should be the same reasons why we should not allow then to put a loaded weapon in their hands.”

Becoming a “go-to” source for veterinary information and testimony for much of the animal rights movement,  Holly Cheever testified at state and federal legislative hearings against donkey basketball,  diving mule acts,  greased pig chases,  rodeos,  traveling petting zoos,  and traveling circuses in 1992,  against  fur trapping in 1997,  against docking dogs’ tails in 1999,  and against bear hunting in 2004.

Opposed use of carriage horses

Also in 1999,  Holly Cheever testified against the use of horse-drawn carriages in New York City,  a topic to which she returned many times.

“Given Manhattan’s climate,  composition and architecture,”  Holly Cheever said,  “It is inherently impossible to have a humane carriage operation.

“Spooking can happen to even the best-trained and well-mannered horse,  and a horse running scared while pulling a carriage in traffic poses a dangerous situation to both the horse and people.”

In 2014 Holly Cheever called “the urban carriage horse ride a 21st century anachronism.”

(See NYC mayor Eric Adams endorses bill to phase out horse-drawn carriages.)

Holly Cheever equally opposed horse racing.

“Cruelty is rooted deep in horse racing”

“Cruelty is rooted deep in the industry of horse racing,” Holly Cheever testified in 2005.  “Horses start their racing career when they are only one and a half years old,  before their bones are fully developed.  They put an unnatural weight on their backs and go through an extremely strict training regime.  Horrible injuries and fractures from racing makes them helpless when they are merely four to six years old,  before reaching full maturity.”

Horse racing,  introduced to Israel in 2006,  ended there in 2018,  but Holly Cheever tried hard to keep it from ever starting,  writing to the Israeli periodical Maāariv in 2005 that depiction of the post-racing lives of horses offered by racing proponents of ‘all horses retired to stud or to luscious pastures with doting wealthy owners,’ applies to a miniscule fraction of the horses bred for racing.”

“Even the successful racers––not to mention the excessive numbers of young horses found unsuitable for the sport––are disposed of in huge numbers via abandonment or slaughterhouses.  There simply are not enough humane homes for the unwanted animals in Israel or in any other country,”  Holly Cheever warned,  “and sympathetic ‘rescuers’ often find that they lack sufficient resources for the 20-plus years remaining in an unwanted race horse’s life.”

Clashed with the AVMA

From 1997 to 2001 Holly Cheever in addition to her other work was a veterinary columnist for Good Housekeeping magazine.

Her activism brought her into conflict with the American Veterinary Medical Association [AVMA],  then dominated by older male agricultural veterinarians

“For years,  Holly Cheever presented scientific evidence [at veterinary conferences,  as well as elsewhere] that forced molting causes the needless death of many hens at egg factories,”  recalled retired northern Vermont veterinarian Peggy Larson.

Peggy Larson

Like Holly Cheever,  Peggy Larson began her veterinary career working with large animals,  and finished as a low-cost high-volume spay/neuter specialist.

In between,  Peggy Larson also became a lawyer,  to successfully sue in response to the bullying and attempted intimidation she encountered while working for the USDA and the Vermont Department of Agriculture.

(See Who will fix Vermont cats with Peggy Larson retired?)

Elected vice president of the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights,  which in 2008 merged into the Humane Society of the U.S.,  now called Humane World for Animals,  Holly Cheever was in 2004 allowed to address a pre-conference meeting of AVMA annual convention delegates,  but AVAR was otherwise excluded from the five-day conference for allegedly “espousing philosophies or actions in opposition to those of the AVMA.”

Then-AVMA executive vice president Bruce Little on July 21,  2004 even barred the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights from tabling at a booth it had already reserved and paid for.

“Has anyone betrayed more animals than the AVMA?”

Explained Holly Cheever on the AVAR web site,   “On June 21, 2004,  a full-page ad ran in the New York Times asking,  “Has anyone betrayed more animals than the American Veterinary Medical Association?   The ad was sponsored by Animal Rights International,   People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,   United Poultry Concerns,   and the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights.

“While AVAR did not create the ad,”  Holly Cheever said,   “we were asked if we wished to sign it,  since it addressed many issues which AVAR had brought before the AVMA.

“The ad focused first,”  said Cheever,   “on the AVMA endorsement of the pregnant sow gestation crate.  In 2002 the AVMA adopted a resolution approving use of gestation crates,  in which the sow is confined for months in a barren metal enclosure that prevents her from moving more than a few inches from side to side.

Chickens

“Second,”  Holly Cheever continued,   “the ad highlights the inexplicable retention of Gregg Cutler,  DVM,  on the AVMA Animal Welfare Committee,”   representing poultry welfare,  “despite the fact that he was shown in three separate affidavits,  including his own sworn deposition,  to have ordered the mass slaughter of 30,000 chickens in California,”  during a Newcastle disease outbreak spread by cockfighters,  “by throwing them alive into a wood chipper.  Needless to say,  death by wood chipper is not included among the acceptable methods listed in the 2000 Report of the AVMA Panel on Euthanasia.

“Third,  although AVAR asked the AVMA to change its position on forced molting in laying hens to condemn total food withdrawal,”  the technique used to trick hens’ bodies into responding as if going through winter,  to induce another egg-laying cycle,  “the AVMA continued to permit the total starvation of hens for an average of 10 to 14 days to shock those who survive into a second laying season.  This practice is outlawed in Europe and is condemned by our Canadian colleagues,”  Holly Cheever pointed out.

Veal crates

Finally,   Holly Cheever explained,   “the ad cited the AVMA for its permissive attitude toward the use of the veal crate,  in which a dairy calf is held immobilized for his brief life in a box no more than two feet wide while being fed an iron-deficient liquid diet,  producing chronic diarrhea and the prized pale anemic flesh desired by chefs.  The calves never have the opportunity to perform natural postural movements,  nor can they socialize,  nor do they ever have the chance to develop the normal digestion of a ruminant animal.

“We at AVAR signed onto the ad,”  Holly Cheever finished,   “because we feel that it is incumbent upon the AVMA to follow its own Principles of Veterinary Medical Ethics,  2003 revision,  which specifically state that ‘Veterinarians should first consider the needs of the patients:  to relieve disease,  suffering,  or disability while minimizing pain and fear.’”

Work continues

The work of AVAR on that front continues,  a generation later,  with the active encouragement of Peggy Larson,  by the veterinary ethics organization Our Honor,  headquartered in Berkeley,  California.

Holly Cheever,  after the Humane Society of the U.S. absorbed AVAR,  became a founding member of the Leadership Council of the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association.

In that capacity,  Holly Cheever warned that the proposed use of liquid carbon dioxide to kill chickens presents a risk that the birds might freeze to death before losing consciousness.

Fought foie gras industry

In September 2006 Holly Cheever visited Chicago to testify in favor of a foie gras ban,  adopted after her testimony but repealed two years later.  As the U.S. foie gras industry is centered in the Hudson River valley region,  she was familiar with industry practices.

Wrote Chicago Tribune reporter Gary Washburn,  “’There is no humane way to produce this product,’  said Cheever,  who recounted how pipes are inserted down the throats of birds raised for foie gras production in three-times-a-day feedings.”

“Because their livers expand to such abnormal size,  they cannot fill their lungs,”  Holly Cheever said.  “They cannot walk because their legs are forced out to the side.”

Testified against livestock abuse

Long after leaving large animal veterinary practice behind,  Holly Cheever remained involved in large animal issues as an expert witness,  for example in the 2010 prosecution of Shamokin,  Pennsylvania dairy farmer Lloyd Reitz Sr. and his son Andy for allegedly neglecting and mistreating their cattle.

The two were acquitted,  however,  after the judge accepted that their practices were routine in the dairy industry.

A somewhat more satisfactory result came after the Los Angeles-based group Mercy for Animals in May 2012 released undercover video showing workers at Ontario Livestock Sales in Ontario,  California “kicking and stomping on pigs to get them to move through a narrow chute,  hitting emus with a baton and slinging baby goats by the neck and hind legs.

“In one shot,”  summarized Gillian Flaccus for Associated Press,  “two workers drag a sick sheep who can’t walk by her ears and heave her into the back of a van.”

“Unpleasant from beginning to end”

“If they were to do this to a companion animal like a dog or a cat,  everyone would jump up in outrage,”  Holly Cheever told Flaccus.

“Cheever said in one shot,  a cow appears to be suffering from a prolapsed uterus and is bleeding,”  Flaccus continued.

Said Holly Cheever,  “Even food animals are supposed to be given proper care and protection from abuse and this is very clear cut abuse.  The dragging of the downed animals,  the tossing of the baby animals onto the floor,  leaving them gasping and dying––it’s hard to choose any one aspect [as worst] because it’s pretty unpleasant from beginning to end.”

Ontario Livestock Sales owner Horacio Santorsola in 2014 pleaded guilty to one
misdemeanor count of animal cruelty in San Bernardino County Superior Court and was sentenced to pay $1,000 to the Inland Valley Humane Society,  as well as serving two years on probation.

“Her work was both national & local”

“She worked to remove elephants from circuses.  She worked to ban canine tail-cropping and feline declawing.  She forcefully advocated against the brutality of foie gras cultivation and factory farming,”  her son Jesse Sommers recounted.

“Her work was both national and local,  introducing dozens of Voorheesville students to what’s really in a hot dog,  and she never relented in the face of the often enraged critics she made uncomfortable by her uncompromising,  unselfconscious,  and unapologetic truth-telling.”

Along the way,  Holly Cheever served as a guest instructor “in a number of veterinary schools nationwide,”  Jesse Sommers said.

“Fulfilled professional dream”

After many years of veterinary practice in nearby Bethlehem and Guilderland,  New York,  Holly Cheever and Michael McCarthy,  DVM in 2010 cofounded Voorheesville’s Village Animal Clinic in the Town of New Scotland.

“In so doing,  we each fulfilled our professional dream,”  Holly Cheever wrote for the Altamont Enterprise.

“First,  to practice veterinary medicine with the overarching philosophy that our patients’ welfare is of paramount importance.  Therefore,  no canine ear crops or tail docks and no feline declawing.

“Second,  to offer our skills to combat the pet overpopulation problem,  which is the root cause of all companion animal suffering.  We partner with Guilderhaven,”  a local shelter,  to provide low-cost spay-neuter surgeries to rescued animals.

“Third,  to provide triage care for injured and orphaned wildlife pro-bono;  and

“Finally, to serve as a community resource for students of all ages having the cherished aim of becoming a veterinarian.”

Helped to bust scammers & hoarders

Despite her heavy workload as a practicing veterinarian and an expert witness in cases elsewhere,  Holly Cheever continued to help Samantha Mullen,  Susan McDonough,  and the New York Humane Association to shut down severely substandard “no kill shelters” locally.

A memorable 2004 case brought the conviction,  two years later,  of Cherokee Ridge Animal Rescue Facility founder Susan Peters,  of Coeyman,  on 18 counts of misdemeanor cruelty for neglecting 287 animals.

Peters in 2010 pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court Wednesday to accepting more than $66,000 in Social Security benefits while falsely claiming she was unable to work.

“She’s an overwhelmed caregiver”

In 2011 Holly Cheever helped to prosecute Michelle Regels,  an Albany woman who lived out of her garage while 44 cats and a dog had the run of her house,  described by Albany Times Union staff writer Bryan Fitzgerald as “an oversized and untended litter box.”

But Holly Cheever distinguished Regels from people who raise funds in support of animal hoarded.

“She’s an overwhelmed caregiver,”  Holly Cheever told Fitzgerald.

Summarized Fitzgerald,  “Cheever recommends that whoever prosecutes or sentences Regels, or any animal hoarder,  should include mandatory psychological counseling,  set a strict number of animals,  if any,  whom the person should be allowed to take care of , and have an animal control official check on that person on a regular basis.

“It’s a psychological condition,”  Holly Cheever warned.   “And the recidivism rate is nearly 100%.”

Angel’s Gate

Holly Cheever,  Samantha Mullen,  and Sue McDonough in 2010 took on Angel’s Gate,  an “animal hospice,”  founded on Long Island in 1993 by former human health care nurse Susan Marino.

Angel’s Gate was reportedly the end destination for hundreds of ill,  injured,  and in some cases apparently dangerous animals,  especially pit bulls,  taken there by other no-kill rescues.

Marino and Angel’s Gate became the darlings of a constellation of no-kill organizations,  though viewed with skepticism by others,  and became magnets for donations while racking up frequent zoning violations.

The last IRS Form 990 available for Angel’s Gate showed receipts of $1.3 million from 2003 to 2006.

Marc Jurnove

Marino then relocated to Delhi,  near Albany.

The renowned late humane investigator Marc Jurnove,  originally an Angel’s Gate defender,  on December 12,  2009 relayed to ANIMALS 24-7 a portfolio of 15 photographs taken by recent visitors to Angel’s Gate,  who alleged that Marino was neglecting animals,  and was having trouble with pit bulls fighting on the premises and injuring other animals.

Jurnove also shared the photos with several organizations closer to the scene.  Then,  when nothing improved,  Jurnove took the dossier to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] in November 2010.

(See Marc R. Jurnove won right of citizens to bring Animal Welfare Act cases.)

Winograd defended Marino

PETA brought the New York State Humane Association into the case,  but while Holly Cheever,  Samantha Mullen,  and Sue McDonough were trying to negotiate their way through a labyrinth of conflicting jurisdictional issues involving the American SPCA and the local district attorney,  PETA in April 2011 took the case public.

No-kill advocates led by Nathan Winograd of the No Kill Advocacy Center in Berkeley,  California,  rose to Marino’s defense.

While other humane organizations critical of Marino backed down,  Holly Cheever and the New York State Humane Association did not.

“Animals trapped in suffering bodies”

“Hospice is a temporary situation that leads to humane euthanasia when the quality of life is no longer acceptable,”  Holly Cheever explained to Mary Esch of Associated Press.

“With Marino,  the animals are essentially trapped inside of suffering bodies without the compassion to end their suffering.  That’s a hallmark of the hoarder.  They refuse to recognize suffering.”

Otsego County Court Judge John F. Lambert finally ordered Angel’s Gate dissolved on October 2,  2015.

(See Court finally puts Angel’s Gate out of its misery.)

“When we are down to euthanizing 200,000 animals per year rather than 2-3 million,  then we can talk ‘no-kill,’”  Holly Cheever wrote to ANIMALS 24-7.

Mother-of-the-Year

Among myriad awards and honors Holly Cheever received over the years,  a favorite was that in 2021 she was named the 22nd annual Capital Region Mother of the Year at the Albany Tulip Festival.

Concluded Jesse Sommers,  who with his sisters nominated her,  “Mary Helen ‘Holly’ Cheever is survived by her brother, Dan Cheever Jr.;  her sister, Olivia Cheever;  her husband, Dean Sommer;  and their four children,  Jesse,  Caitlin, Robin,  and Brenna,”  as well as by grandchildren.

Holly Cheever could best be honored,  Jesse Sommers told a memorial service audience,  if “In lieu of sending flowers,  don’t eat meat.  In lieu of not eating meat,  always be kind to animals.”

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