Anderson, who helped animals in Baltimore, dies at 83

When Robert L. Anderson proposed to his wife, Elizabeth "Liz" Kirk-Anderson, she told him she couldn't give him an answer until he talked to her heart specialist.

Kirk-Anderson had always had serious heart issues. Her doctor told Anderson as much: "Are you sure you want to marry her?" he recalled the specialist asking. "She's only got about two years to live."

That didn't deter Anderson, who believed her vibrancy and compassion gave her the best heart around. Plus, she never gave up without a fight. So the couple married in a church in 1978 — and Kirk-Anderson lived another 46 years. She died Oct. 8 of heart problems at the age of 80.

Kirk-Anderson was born in Baltimore on Jan. 31, 1944, to Walter and Beatrice Kirk. She spent the majority of her life in the region, where she dedicated herself to animal welfare causes.

She co-founded the Animal Welfare League of Greater Baltimore and served as its CEO for three decades before it closed. She helped establish Pets on Wheels, a nonprofit that brings therapy animals to nursing homes, libraries and other facilities. She served on the city's first Animal Welfare/Control Task Force.

"If she saw you strike a kitten or a dog or whatever, she was in your face," her husband said. "If you were a dog lover or cat lover, she would go over and talk to you about the cat or the dog — 'Oh, how nice it looks, well fed.' She'd give you all the good compliments, so you walked away feeling like you knew everything about raising a dog."

She had many pets over the years, and one of the most memorable was a dog by the name of Richard Bryant Seabrooks Kirk-Anderson I — "the one and only," Anderson said. He was a special dog who would jump happily into swimming pools filled with algae.

Kirk-Anderson buried 18 of her pets, as well as her mother, in a Howard County pet cemetery . She planned to be buried there, too, until legal trouble and mismanagement forced it to close to new burials two decades ago. When Kirk-Anderson heard officials wanted to move the bodies and the animals there, she tried to find legal avenues to stop it, her husband said.

It was their mutual love of animals that first connected the couple, Anderson said. They were in their 30s at a junior college, sitting in a music room with a big set of bleachers. Anderson was seated at the very top next to a young, attractive woman — but he only had eyes for the beautiful woman with long blonde hair in the front row.

They struck up a conversation, and Anderson spent the next four decades happily saying, "Yes, ma'am," to almost anything she asked of him. That's the secret to a long and fulfilling marriage, he said.

Anderson described his wife as "somebody who should have been a drill instructor." She was always on top of things, professionally and personally, and helped keep track of money and to-do lists that helped the couple live a full life. But she was also deeply empathetic, and her care for others extended beyond animals.

While she was working for the Animal Welfare League, she enrolled in a now-closed nursing school at Union Memorial Hospital. She spent nine years working in the emergency room.

"She just wanted to help people," Anderson said. He would often come home to find strangers in his house, especially older women, whom Kirk-Anderson had taken under her wing.

Outside of her vocation, Kirk-Anderson was curious and filled with wanderlust, her husband said. She was captivated by different cultures, especially in Native American tribes, and wanted to learn as much as she could. She had many hobbies, including making greeting cards and taking photos, Anderson said.

"From day one that I met her, she would always have a camera, taking pictures of this, pictures of that," he said.

Kirk-Anderson was a deeply religious person, but in a broad sense, studying Catholicism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam and other faiths, her husband said. She held leadership positions in religious organizations throughout her life and eventually became a nondenominational minister. After lower tax rates lured her to Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, in 2015, she became a member of the Baha'i faith, which promotes the unity of all people.

Believe it or not, it was Kirk-Anderson's faith that prompted her to buy her first motorcycle at age 55. She frequented campsites and would often see bikers gathered there, her husband said.

"She'd scratch her head and she'd say, 'You know, wait a minute, there's nobody preaching to these bikers,'" Anderson recalled. "So the next thing I know, she's got this trike, she's customizing the trike, and then she says, 'I'm a minister. I'm going out and preach to the bikers.'"

Kirk-Anderson was a big fan of solo travels, and she took her bike across the northern U.S. and Canada. She also road-tripped across the country several times in her conversion van, fondly called "Ramblin' Rose." And she was a frequent visitor to Europe.

She was able to travel so much because "she had a good husband to stay home and take care of the dogs and cats," Anderson joked. But, in all seriousness, she just "wanted to go out and to see everything," he said.

She saw as much as she could here on Earth. Her next journey has just begun.