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Arnieta Kurtz volunteered for so long at Brookfield Zoo — 46 years — that they named a baby giraffe for her. She died last month at 73. | Brookfield Zoo

Arnieta Kurtz, Brookfield Zoo volunteer who had a giraffe named for her, dies

As a Brookfield Zoo volunteer for 46 years, Arnieta Kurtz gave so much of herself that the zoo named a newborn giraffe for her.

Born in 2007, Arnieta the giraffe grew from 4 feet to 15 feet, is still at Brookfield and is now a “grand-giraffe” with an offspring, Dave, who went on to father a female calf.

Naming the giraffe for her was a fitting tribute to the Ms. Kurtz, the zoo’s longest-serving volunteer, who died last month at 73.

Once, when, she was visiting with her namesake, she overheard some zoo visitors wondering about the name of “her” giraffe.

“She said, ‘That’s me!’ ” according to her sister Judy.

“Arnieta liked to tell the story of how a giraffe got a German girl’s name,” said Regi Mezydlo, the zoo’s director of volunteers.

That German girl grew up in Downers Grove at a time it was still surrounded by working farms. She and her sister Judy and brother John would go ice-skating at Prince Pond, toasting their hands on a potbellied stove in its warming house. They sipped nickel Green Rivers at the old-fashioned drugstore in town.

The sisters used to collect plastic model horses made by Chicago’s Breyer Molding Company. When Ms. Kurtz died, she still had some of those horses at her retirement home in Mesa, Arizona.

She had returned to Illinois for a family reunion and died after a fall, her sister said.

That day, she’d been planning to volunteer at the zoo.

Arnieta Kurtz with Arnieta, the giraffe named for her. | Brookfield Zoo

Arnieta Kurtz with Arnieta, the giraffe named for her. | Brookfield Zoo

Ms. Kurtz came from a family of animal lovers. They had a collie called Silk and a cat named Patrick. At one point, they had eight cats and five dogs in the house, thanks to a litter of kittens and puppies born to another dog, a Basenji named Princess.

Arnieta was named after her mother, who grew up downstate in a German community in Effingham.

She went to grade school at St. Joseph in Downers Grove and graduated from Nazareth Catholic Academy high school.

After two years at Quincy University, she transferred to Loyola University Chicago, where she earned an education degree.

Settling in Naperville, Ms. Kurtz taught for 35 years at Woodridge School, now Murphy Elementary in Woodridge. Her classroom, filled with life, had rabbits, guinea pigs and fish-filled aquariums.

She sometimes combined her love of animals with global lessons. “She would have her kids write letters to the prime minister of Japan, protesting whaling practices that kill dolphins,” her sister said.

Ms. Kurtz once wrote that “one of the first things I did as a wage-earner was to become a member of Brookfield Zoo, since I’ve always been crazy about animals of all kinds.”

In 1972, she became one of the zoo’s first volunteers. She would stuff envelopes and worked in the Elephant’s Trunk gift shop. Sometimes, she talked with kids about animals in the Children’s Zoo or at Holiday Magic.

“She was very kind and very caring and extremely smart,” Mezydlo said.

When the zoo’s Tropic World opened in 1982, she helped with gorilla observation, taking note of grooming and eating habits and interactions with juvenile primates.

In 1983, Ms. Kurtz joined the zoo’s docent program, in which trained volunteers educate visitors about animals and artifacts.

Observing golden lion tamarin monkeys in 1998, she told the Daily Herald, “I can’t see them in their real habitat in Brazil, but this is as neat an experience.”

In 2005, she moved to Arizona, where she worked as a paraprofessional at the New Horizon School for the Performing Arts. “The kids just loved her,” her colleague Sherry Occhuizzo said.

And she loved being surrounded by the giant saguaro cacti of the desert.

Still, Ms. Kurtz regularly returned to Chicago and volunteered more than 50 hours a year for the zoo.

Mezydlo said, “There’ll never be anyone else like her.”

Ms. Kurtz owned, bred and showed champion basenji dogs and was active with basenji clubs in Chicago and Phoenix. After she died, a Phoenix basenji club found new homes for her dogs, her sister said.

Ms. Kurtz is also survived by her niece Kelly, nephew David and great-niece Adeline. Her sister said a memorial is being planned at Brookfield Zoo.

Arnieta the giraffe, named for Arnieta Kurtz, is now 11 and had a grand-giraffe child. | Brookfield Zoo

Arnieta the giraffe, named for Arnieta Kurtz, is now 11 and had a grand-giraffe child. | Brookfield Zoo

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