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Sponsor-a-day

In honor of Keith La Chappelle on this Trifecta Day

June 13, 2025 by Diana 9 Comments

Tobin is the third sponsor of the day!

Thank you, Tobin for recognizing the trifecta celebration in honor of the founder of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, Keith La Chappelle.

Here is Tobin’s tribute for this significant day:

I am honored and pleased to celebrate this year’s Trifecta Day in honor of my pal Negra’s birthday (she is 17 years younger than the day se came to CSNW) and the birthday of Terry. Last year, I sponsored the Trifecta Day in honor of Karen Creason and Margaret Parkinson, who were at the Sanctuary on June 13, 2008 to greet their seven new friends with blankets and toys.

This year, I wish to honor Keith La Chappelle for his corporeal acts of charity and mercy in seeking to establish a sanctuary where Negra and her six companion chimpanzees could finally live. His name is one of many whose name is on the list of the Righteous humans who have taken action to seek humane treatment of our cousins in the Tree of Life. On behalf of her Majesty (and, a later arrival, Terry the Town Talker), we thank you.

And, I so wish our beloved Neggie and our cherished Bronx Cheer-leader very happy birthday celebrations and a new year of life abounding in enjoyable experiences.

Keith and Nick

 

 

Filed Under: Negra, Sanctuary, Sponsor-a-day, Terry Tagged With: keith, Sponsor-a-day, trifecta

In memory of Marya Barey on a Special Friday the 13th

June 13, 2025 by Diana 23 Comments

Today, Friday, June 13, 2025 is the 17th arrival anniversary of the Cle Elum Seven: Jamie, Missy, Annie, Burrito, Foxie, Jody, and Negra. They arrived at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest on Friday, June 13, 2008.

truck pulling up driveway with chimps

That day in 2008 was the birth of their new lives, and we made the decision to celebrate Negra’s birthday from that day forward on June 13th. She was the eldest and we felt she needed a new beginning more than any other.

And now we also have Terry at our sanctuary, whose true date of birth is June 13th!

It’s a whole lot to celebrate, and the symbolism of the day is even more salient with the recent arrival of George.

It’s also a significant day, for a different reason, for Michail and Marya. Michail’s is the first of several sponsor-a-days that we will be sharing on this special day.

Some of you reading this will likely recognize the name Marya. She was a loyal follower and frequent commenter on this blog. Marya passed at the end of last year.

Marya was endlessly curious about the behavior of the chimpanzees and their personalities, and took obvious delight in learning more about them, asking questions on the blog, emailing me with supportive words, and sending donations whenever she could. I know Marya would be THRILLED to know that she helped get George to CSNW through her donations.

There’s so much about her that I didn’t know when she was alive, and I was glad to find out about through her husband, Michail, after she passed.

Below is his sponsor-a-day letter in memory of Marya, telling a bit of their story and their celebrations of Friday the 13ths.

You can scroll down to the end to read Michail’s summary message, which I placed in bold font, but you’ll probably want to go back to read his touching words about the love of his life. I imagine Marya might be embarrassed about this attention focused on her on the blog, I’m very glad we can recognize her in this way on a special Friday the 13th.

Jamie would approve, I just know it.

It is with great pleasure to have the opportunity to describe my first memory of being made aware of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest by my Dearly Beloved, Marya Mendelson Barey. She was getting treatment infusions in a hospital bed, and that delightful memory was the playful sounds of chimps coming out of her iPhone video, that she had discovered and was watching, commingled with her uncontrollable giggling. It was the early days in our COVID-19 quarantine in a daunting stage 3 drug trial that lasted thirty-four 10-day cycles 4 weeks apart at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. And that joyful memory, for me, marked the beginning of a new love (for all things chimpanzees love) that immediately sustained a greater quickening level of compassion in Marya and I also am certain that by virtually hanging out with and financially supporting her chimps have added precious living years to her real life, not counting her relentless, medically challenging schedule.

When I asked to sponsor this special Friday the Thirteenth, it was to commemorate the 98th anniversary of that first Friday the Thirteenth in October 1967.  That was a magical day. We were classmates who spent time together on a field trip in St. Petersburg in her first year at Florida Presbyterian College. I knew we were falling into love by sunset of that first day of our forever life together. She was 17 years old, and I was 19. It took us 6 months on Good Friday April 12, 1968, until our first kiss, standing on the seawall of our beach front campus, where we had walked so that I could share the news that my granddaddy had just died, where we found ourselves with tears streaming down both our cheeks, kissing. When we were married on the last day of January in 1970 and moved off campus, I was 21 and Marya was 19. The short story is I have a list of all those 98 celebrations of Friday the Thirteenths, including today which happens to be the only 13th Friday in 2025.

After our 14.5 year honeymoon when we didn’t even have a fight or even spend a night apart, at one point we found our separate paths in schools, where she got a PhD in Psychology at the University of Missouri in Columbia, while I became a Licensed Unity Teacher at Unity School of Christianity in Unity Village (near Kansas City). Skip 56 years ahead to 2023 which was how long it took for that momentous 1967 calendar to be identical. We chose to renew our wedding vows on Friday the Thirteenth in October, 2023. And by then I’d gotten to hear about Jamie and her fashion statements. Marya even sent her a scarf, and it was an awesome moment when Marya saw Jamie wearing it on a video, not that Jamie was her favorite, but the scarf was not all that brought her to tears. There’s Burrito who had a near death experience taking a snakebite to guard his group, or the chimp who had spent decades in a laboratory and, when given a chance, she went straight up to top of a tree like she’d been doing it every day.

I saw that brief video where the chimps were gathered saying their goodbyes to Jody and was brought to tears when the one elder, who I call Grandmother Shaman, stretched out her arm and scooped up to heaven the spirit of one who was, as Marya said, “Called Back”) and all the countless chimps’ names who were written on the back of the inside of Marya’s heart, who touched her heart truly and deeply (as other human way showers: Hildegard of Bingen, Mother Teresa, Matthew Fox, Richard Rohr, David Whyte, Robert Bly, Mirabai Starr), that she kept prayer vigil with in silent unity, in that fierce and tender love that inhabits the soul, to hold safe and protect from harm, centered, from the heart of compassion for all sentient beings.

At this point, I can hear Marya, as she has so many times over the 5 decades we’ve been swapping stories, saying something gentle like: “That’s enough context already, you’d best be getting to your point.” Mostly always, I’d keep going for a bit, knowing it was risky because my “chipmonk” ways might take a wrong turn and I’d drive a Hertz truck dead-end into a cornfield (like when we were on the Blue Ridge Parkway moving to Princeton Theological Seminary), but not wanting her to lose patience, I will pick up the pace (especially since I am writing) before I hear the final stern suggestion, “Just spit it out, I already know what you’re going to say.” Truth be told, today is not about the miracle journey, daily now moment to moment walk with my left foot named gratitude and my right step called answered prayer (that’d be a chapter book anyway), it’s really all about Jamie’s group and synchronicity.

We made it to Fred Hutch Cancer Care fifth floor on time for blood and platelets infusions the morning of December 10, 2024. Marya’s blood pressure dropped while already holding hands with her nurses she trusted the most before the emergency response team came, and she took the first ambulance ride of her life to UW Medical Center, got a room for the night which we all agreed she might not make it through, but we had a six hour bubble, after the machines were turned off, when we were able to say everything we needed to say that was on our hearts and then some.

Two things: We knew this was a 13th Friday month, and she said, “You have to call Diana at the Sanctuary.”

And the next day, she waited for me, conscious, peaceful, radiant, and when I arrived to say, “I’m here. I love you. Never in my whole life have I seen you so beautiful,” she couldn’t see or speak, but she gave me a smirk, that meant she let me have the last word. You see, Marya’s courage was a great soul of forgiveness and grace, when it came down to letting go, such a one who laid her body down four or five breaths after that last word, beautiful, that she left me, quietly at 6:44p, with my heart full of a joy unspeakable, eventually, in a month or so, a turtle named sorrow waltzed in to inhabit my heart also, and a comfortable time after that, a loneliness, I’d never known the likes of before in my whole life, evolved into a peaceful solitary freedom.

Skip to New Year’s Day morning when Diana returned my call on her day off. It was a long call because she had only seen Marya once on a zoom and she had no idea (and wanted to hear about it all) that Marya was an ovarian cancer survivor since 2003, that chemo knocked out the second recurrence that had reached stage four in 2017, or that it was MDS a blood cancer that slowly turned into leukemia when the drug trial ended.

Near the end of our call, I was describing the significance of Friday the Thirteenths, she paused the call, came back and said, “Just wanted to make sure I was right, and that the arrival of Jamie’s group at the Sanctuary was Friday, June 13, 2008. We’ve had one 6th Anniversary in 2014, and we’re planning a 17th Anniversary this year in June.”

Of course, Marya never mentioned our lifelong 13th Friday celebrations to Diana, but Marya would’ve dearly loved to have known this serendipity of Jamie’s group intake. So today it has been a distinct honor to share in Marya’s Chimpanzee Sanctuary Legacy, to connect some of the dots for you to know why I just had to request to sponsor this special day, on so many levels.

What this day is all about, for Marya and me, is how we never know how connected or related we are as a family, beyond our births and our deaths, or another way to say it, that we may mostly always know who touches our heart, but we will usually never know how many hearts our one heart has touched, or the difference we make to everyone who’s path coincides with our own in the living years.

Filed Under: Chimp histories, Negra, Sponsor-a-day, Terry Tagged With: friday the 13th, friday the thirteenth, in memory, marya barey, Sponsor-a-day

To A Young Zoologist

December 13, 2024 by Grace

Thank you to Tobin, longtime supporter of the chimpanzees here at CSNW, for sponsoring today’s day of sanctuary in honor of a young zoologist.

“A few months ago, I had the good fortune of speaking to a zoologist named Luke. This scientist described the wildlife sanctuary that he has created and maintains in his grandmother’s yard. His refuge provides room and board and delicious refreshments for worms, ants, beetles, snails, and other migratory creatures. 

Given Luke’s attentiveness to the needs of those who reside at what he refers to as his “bugatory”, I thought that I should sponsor a day of sanctuary for him on December 13th. As of today, Luke has now completed a half dozen orbits around the sun and he is setting off on another year’s-long round trip. While I don’t thing that Luke is so old that he has grown a white beard like Gordo has, he is another year older. 

Luke is also interested in – and friends with- cats, dogs, and cattle. A few years ago, his grandmother introduced him to Burrito and his friends. As I understand it, he would prefer to see some gorillas at the sanctuary. I don’t think that request can be accommodated, but, given how Willy B, Terry, and Gordo can sometimes make themselves look bigger, perhaps they can be substitute gorillas, at least for today.”

Thank you, Tobin, for sponsoring this day of sanctuary. And cheers to you, Luke- for creating your own sanctuary in your grandmother’s backyard!

 

Filed Under: Sponsor-a-day, Thanks Tagged With: chimpanzee sanctuary, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, Sponsor-a-day

In Memory of Lost Time

November 5, 2024 by Diana

Tobin, longtime fan and supporter of the chimpanzees, erudite and expressive blog commenter, sponsored today’s day of sanctuary in memory of lost time.

She has her own story about the meaning of today with personal memories and global narratives of time and opportunities that have slipped by.

Speaking about the chimpanzees, she shared this poignant sentiment:

“…I grieve for lost time, and for squandered opportunities. I mourn for a planet where people like Lucky and Honey, Willy B and Burrito, should be able to not merely survive as passengers on a proverbial lifeboat, but, moreover should be able to live, and to live their lives in abundance.”

Thank you, Tobin.

Filed Under: Sponsor-a-day, Thanks Tagged With: donor, Sponsor-a-day, Tobin

Jane P. Wishes Foxie a Happy Birthday

August 8, 2024 by Diana

Today’s sponsor-a-day comes in the form of supporter Jayne P. sending Foxie well wishes on her special day.

In Jane’s words: “Happy Birthday to my Chimpanzee Pal Foxie!!! 48 years young on Aug. 8 and going strong. Best wishes for this beautiful girl for many years to come.”

Thank you Jane for being one of Foxie’s Pals and for sponsoring this day of sanctuary in her honor! Stay tuned to the blog to learn all about Foxie’s big day of celebration!

Filed Under: Foxie, portrait, Sponsor-a-day, Thanks Tagged With: birthday, Foxie, Jane P., pal, Sponsor-a-day

In honor of the graduating primate students!

June 8, 2024 by Diana

April Binder sponsored today’s day of sanctuary with this message: “Congrats to all 2024 graduates of CWU primate behavior programs – BS and MS!”

Central Washington University and the primate program play a special role here at the sanctuary. Several staff members, past and present (present company included), got our start in this field at CWU. Co-Director J.B. went full circle and is now an adjunct professor, teaching Anthropology 201. And we’ve had dozens of amazing primate behavior students as interns here at the sanctuary, including this year!

So, we wholeheartedly join April in congratulating the students who are graduating today!

 

Filed Under: Sponsor-a-day, Volunteers, Volunteers-Interns Tagged With: central washington university, cwu, primate behavior program, Sponsor-a-day

Today is in honor of Monica and Love a Chimpanzee Day!

April 23, 2024 by Diana

Join us in celebrating Love a Chimpanzee Day by honoring this day with a donation of any size on what also happens to be the first day of early giving for GiveBIG!

Donate specifically in honor of Monica (leave a birthday note for her) on our joint birthday fundraising page or on our general GiveBIG page – all funds, which are very much needed right now, go directly towards all the costs associated with providing the individualized care we give at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest.

It all started in 2010 when donor Monica declared April 23rd (her birthday) to be Love a Chimpanzee Day and sponsored the day in memory of her cat Ozzie.

Monica sent a care package of toys for the (then) seven chimpanzees, and you can see the video of them enjoying that day here.

It’s difficult to avoid the nostalgia that watching that video, and thinking of other Love a Chimpanzee Days in the past, brings up. One favorite memory for Monica was from the 2011 Love a Chimpanzee Day when Burrito so graciously posed with a photo of Duran Duran, Monica’s favorite band.

Burrito loves Duran Duran

So much has changed at the sanctuary in the ensuing years. It wasn’t until the fall of 2011 that Young’s Hill, the outdoor area for Jamie’s group, came to fruition.

Then there was adding additional land to the sanctuary property, bringing the total to over 110 acres, followed by welcoming four bovine friends to our little family to help us keep the pasture grass under control.

The last six years have been the busiest in terms of construction and expansion.

Back in 2010, we couldn’t have envisioned what the sanctuary would look like today. Or the joy, delight, excitement, love, laughter (and, let’s be real here, worry, stress, and sleepless nights) that the group of nine chimpanzees (three plus six) from Wildlife Waystation would introduce into our lives, nor the incredible volunteer and staff caregivers who would join the team and the amazing supporters who would add their valuable insight, encouragement, and donations – making all of this possible.

We couldn’t have predicted that it would be so many years before we were faced with the loss of a sanctuary resident or that it would be beautiful and loyal Jody and gentle giant Nutmeg who we would say goodbye to within a year.

Throughout it all, Monica has been with us, donating towards every conceivable fundraiser and providing support that goes well beyond monetary gifts.

Thank you, Monica! Happy birthday and happy Love a Chimpanzee Day 2024!!

Don’t forget to donate in honor of Monica on our joint birthday fundraising page or on our general GiveBIG page for early giving during Washington State’s days of giving!

 

 

Filed Under: Construction, Fundraising, Negra, Nesting, Sanctuary, Sponsor-a-day, Thanks Tagged With: GiveBIG, love a chimpanzee day, Monica, Sponsor-a-day

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