Dr. George Whitney, longtime veterinarian of Orange, Connecticut, has died. The nicest man I have ever known.
Thanks to George’s generosity, I essentially grew up in the Whitney Clinic from ages 9 to 18 after we moved into a house a 5-minute walk away. The clinic was started by George’s father Leon, a good friend of my father Ernest. I always knew Dr. Whitney as George, a man without a pretentious bone in his body. Many was the surgery I assisted George with along with cleaning countless dirty cages.
By the fifth grade I knew George quite well and chose him as my character to portray in a show at Orange Center School. Dressed in a trapper’s hat, rubber boots and buffalo plaid outdoor jacket, his typical get-up, my only line was George’s unique and signature bursting laugh: Aagghhhh!!!
Outside of life in the clinic, I and several others, adult and child, frequently followed him into the night on a hunt as baying coon hounds quarried a raccoon up a tree. George would climb the tree, shake the animal loose, and it would fall to a net on the ground, the rest of us pouncing to close the net. A live catch!
Wanting to expand my own animal breeding population, George knew of an animal researcher at Yale who had guinea pigs missing an eye that were of no more scientific value. He could arrange for me to have a few if I would just save one or two for his 8-foot python to feed on. Of course! Not immediately beknownst to George I left the lab with some 275 animals. He was heartily amused when he saw the python cage nearly over-run with perhaps a dozen one-eyed animals left in there.
George kept snakes at his house as well. Typically, as things were often somewhat disorganized, one would get loose. Then he would call for a "find the boa constrictor party" at his home.
George was a hard-working fellow who loved his work as a Vet. I never saw the man down or in a negative state of mind. His bursting laugh was up-lifting and good humor always setting the tone. Just a kid, he always treated me as an equal. Would that every man be George, for jealousy, hostility and conflict would find no purchase and so cease to exist. Good-bye and God speed, George. We revel in the good fortune of knowing you.
Lance Roderic Hart
Killingworth