Remembering Nathania Gartman
Nathania Gartman was a co-founder of Best Friends and the creator of humane education at the Sanctuary.
Kids and learning were extremely important to Nathania. From Best Friends’ earliest days, she was arranging for youth groups to volunteer and help out at the Sanctuary (sometimes to the puzzlement of the others, who wondered what all these kids were doing here). But among other things, those kids built some of the very first aviaries at Feathered Friends.
Nathania was a visionary and had intuitively created what would go on to become Best Friends’ long-lived learning experience program. In fact, the humane education program she ran was so impressive that hers was the first Best Friends department ever to receive an endowment from an outside party, who was impressed by her work.
Nathania went on to become the very first president of the national organization APHE (Association of Professional Humane Educators).
Many of the youth groups Nathania brought in the early days came from the Navajo Nation — a community that was important to Nathania. She spent a lot of time interacting with and learning about that community.
Nathania had a generous personality; she would give you the shirt off her back. Confident and extroverted, long before Best Friends started, she volunteered at hospitals, cheering up patients with games and music.
She was strong. She lived and worked through a lengthy final battle with cancer — always giving the impression that she took it in stride. She remained dedicated to dogs and to children to the very end of her days. Her legacy lives on not only at Best Friends but in humane education across the nation.
