In 1978 the Oregon Journal 's Watford Redd (a Journal Staff Writer) interviewed Miss Boucher about Animal Defender's League Inc., here is what he wrote:
An organization which seeks to be the best friend of man's best friend is seeking members and money.
The Animals Defenders' League spend more than $2,000 a month to uphold its reputation. In 20 years of existence , it never has put an animal to death unless a veterinarian has said it was too sick to be helped.
"We'll go under unless we get money and members, " warned Graziella Boucher, president of the league.
"We have no goal- we need all the members and all the money we can get."
The league cares for about 20 dogs and cats at any given time, and every once in a while it cares for a horse or a cow, too.
Those kennel fees and veterinarian bills pile up.
Miss Boucher, whose frail body houses, a tone of determinations, cannot estimate how many animals the league has saved in the 20 years since she and her late cousin, Charlotte Mish, organized it.
"But we've rescued thousands," Miss Boucher declares.
Most animals come to the league from people who no longer can care for them- families about to move away, elderly men and women who have to move into nursing homes, couples that sell their homes to move into apartments.
The league cares for the animals until it can find good homes for them...
"A drastic change in food sometimes even sends an animals to the hospital, " Miss Boucher said.
She said she often gets more than 100 calls a week from citizens who want to end cruel treatment to animals.
Like many dedicated men and women, Miss Boucher has cone to be known by he cause- in her case as "Miss Animal Defender"
In 1984 the Sunday Oregonian featured a story about the tribute to Miss Boucher. Ann Sullivan (a staff writer) wrote the following:
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During the 1940's Boucher and one of her dogs patrolled downtown streets to collect money to aid animals victims of the Nazi bombinds in London. She sent Presidet Dwight D Eisenhowser a telegram in 1958 protesting the use of animals in rocket experiments.
During the 1950's the tiny animals defender was a persistent critics co conditions at the old Portlad Zoo.
She challenged Mayor Fred L. Peterson to a debate on her allegations of cruelty to zoo animals, and she threatened to seek an arrest warrant for Mayor Dorothy McCullough Lee because she believed the zoo failed to meet state laws on adequate animal housing.
Long after the zoo was rebuilt and renamed .., Warren Iliff because its director and benefactor of Boucher's advise about zoo management and personalized animal care.
" for all her frailty , she was very powerful person who gains much of her strength from her convictions " Iliff said at the time.
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In September 1987 Ann Sullivan of the Oregonian wrote another article after the placement of a bench in Graziella's honor was placed the the Zoo. In the article she writes:
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Jack Marks, he first director of Portland's modern zoo, knew her wrath first when she threw her weight- all of an estimated 100 pounds- again the shameful conditions of the old zoo, high in Washington Park in poor quarters.
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He called her "Gracie."
She hated that names, and she pot even madder, worrying about the poor bears in the large stone and concrete grotto that got hot in summer and ocld in winter. She fussed about feed, quarters, light. She made much noise , albeit in a little voice.
Barely 5 feet tall, in high -heeled sandals and a little straw hate, she marched on City Hall.
Over the next few weeks we look forward to sharing more glimpses into the past and more about ADL inc..'s history.
