The Memorial Service for Hans Ruesch was held on Monday, September 17, 2007, at the cemetery in Massagno, next to Lugano, in his native Switzerland, where Hans had lived for the last decades of his life.

The Service, organized by his three children, began at 4 pm, at the cemetery gates, where those in attendance followed the hearse containing Hans's casket, in light-colored wood and adorned with a large bouquet of, mainly, gold and fuchsia-striped sunflowers. This seemed appropriate for Hans, as sunflowers are more a symbol of life and fecundity, rather than death. And Hans was a master of every activity that he undertook in his long life, as well as an amazingly prolific writer, whose last book, true to his vow to do nothing else but fight vivisection until it would be abolished, was published against vivisection last year, in Italy.

Arrived at the chapel in the cemetery, the casket was transported by Hans's sons and other friends onto the ornate, enclosed funeral bier in front of the benches where the congregation sat down. The first person to speak was Hans Ruesch, Jr, followed by Hans's daughter, Vivian Ruesch Mellon. They both spoke in Hans's mother tongue, Italian, so I do not know what they said, except that I could make out that both referred at length to Hans's anti-vivisection work. Vivian Ruesch Mellon introduced her husband, an American who spoke to the assembly in English, and very eloquently, about his father-in-law. Mr Mellon has promised us a copy of his address, and when we have it, we will post it, and even have it translated into French for those who do not read English.

After Mr Mellon, Madame Doltoressa Fabrizia Pratesi, who supported Hans's scientific anti-vivsection work for many years, spoke, again in Italian, and then the ceremony ended with a recording of Bach's Jésu Joy of Man's Desiring.

After the ceremony, and on the steps of the chapel, we congregated for quite some time, exchanging Hans Ruesch anecdotes... The upshot of these was the confirmation of the observations that Mr Mellon had made in what he had said earlier: that Hans's first love was animals, and that he believed in God, and, therefore, in an afterlife. And we, outside the family, discovered that Hans's children were never, as Hans had so often imagined, against his anti-vivisection work. On the contrary, they are each very sincerely proud of all their father's work.

In fact, I had expected Hans's children to be bourgeois, snobbish and frosty people. On the contrary, they were warm and unpretentious, as well as handsome and dignified, and they spoke with great admiration of their father, despite the hardships of being a child of such a difficult, often coldly intellectual, and exclusive man.

Hans's daughter told me that her father's remains would be cremated, and then she would carry them to Geneva, where they will be buried at Hans's father's grave, since Hans had always loved his father so deeply, despite losing him at age sixteen...

What will be done with Hans's papers will be decided, according to Hans Ruesch Jr, by the members of Hans's Foundation (five, I was told), and I was reassured that we should not worry, everyone understands their value and importance, and there is no doubt but that they will be carefully preserved.

Humanity's Arch-Warrior in the Battle against Vivisection and False Medicine has died and been buried, but those he touched remain fired with the knowledge he put in his books and reports, and will carry on the struggle, inspired by his example. Undoubtedly, from where he now looks down on this world, he will help us, and spur us on... until the war has been won.