{"id":376971,"date":"2010-03-01T18:34:56","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T23:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chicagopressrelease.com\/press-releases\/funeral-for-whale-trainer-killed-by-orca"},"modified":"2010-03-01T18:34:56","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T23:34:56","slug":"funeral-for-whale-trainer-killed-by-orca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/376971","title":{"rendered":"Funeral For Whale Trainer Killed By Orca"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nCHICAGO (CBS)<\/strong> – Friends and family are saying their goodbyes to a top trainer drowned by a killer whale at SeaWorld. A funeral mass for the Northwest Indiana native was held at St. Rita’s on the Southwest Side. <\/span>CBS 2’s Susan Carlson reports.<\/p>\n

\nHundreds of people showed up for the wake Sunday, including one person who was arrested for trying to bring a video camera into the visitation.<\/p>\n

\nPolice say that person was not a member of the media. At the family’s request, the media is keeping a respectful distance as the funeral mass gets underway.<\/p>\n

\nA steady stream of mourners started funneling into St Rita’s chapel an hour and a half before the funeral began for 40-year-old Dawn Brancheau.<\/p>\n

\nDue to the wave of media attention, police remained on hand in case crowd control became an issue.<\/p>\n

\nWhile the family kept quiet in their moment of grief, some of the mourners stopped to talk on their way into the service.<\/p>\n

\n“It’s a very, very sad thing,” said family friend Michael VanWagner. “She’s gonna be missed by hundreds of people. It’s a horrible thing.”<\/p>\n

\n“She was a great lady,” said family friend Casmier Bobak. “Looks like she knew what she was doing. It’s a very sad tragedy.”<\/p>\n

\nMany of them take comfort in the fact that she was able to achieve her dream of training whales.<\/p>\n

\n“She just loved it,” said VanWagner. “You could see it on her face every day. She loved what she did.”<\/p>\n

\n“It’s pretty evident from everybody you talk to that she died doing exactly what she loved doing,” said Ald. Michael Zalewski. “I think it’s important that everyone comes out and remembers that. She was very happy in her profession.” <\/p>\n

\nBrancheau was killed Wednesday when Tilikum the killer whale grabbed her by her ponytail and pulled her under water.<\/p>\n

\nFriends from her hometown in Northwest Indiana were on hand Monday, along with friends from the city’s South Side.<\/p>\n

\nHer nephew is currently a student at St. Rita High School.<\/p>\n

\n“Her brother is very involved with the labor movement here in Chicago. He’s the president of Local 1092,” said Ald. Zalewski. “She has strong ties to the Chicagoland area.”<\/p>\n

\nBrancheau reportedly had that long ponytail that the whale grabbed onto because she was growing out her hair to donate it to “Locks of Love” for cancer patients.<\/p>\n

\nEven more evidence of her character, she was planning to leave for Haiti in a couple weeks with a charity group she was involved with to help victims of the recent earthquake.<\/p>\n

\nAfter the funeral mass, burial will take place at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Alsip.<\/p>\n

\n(\u00a9 MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n

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CHICAGO (CBS) – Friends and family are saying their goodbyes to a top trainer drowned by a killer whale at SeaWorld. A funeral mass for the Northwest Indiana native was held at St. Rita’s on the Southwest Side. CBS 2’s Susan Carlson reports. Hundreds of people showed up for the wake Sunday, including one person […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-376971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}