So I tried to paint a picture that staying out of politics, but quite honestly, me as a city employee at my level, I could not really influence the city commission or the park commissioner or even some of the bureaucrats at City Hall. The saving grace during my tenure in Topeka was that the business community and the movers and shakers in the community, the president of Hill’s Pet Products, manager of Fairlawn Plaza Shopping Center, whoever, who would have the power structure in the community, they from above, I would always have to go from below up to City Hall. They from outside and above would come down with their thumbs on city hall and say, “Hey, don’t mess for the zoo. Let the zoo function like it’s supposed to.” That was my saving grace. And I’m afraid that when I left, some of my successors didn’t have that blessing, but the community is the one who kept the politics out of the zoo. I mean, that’s the way it has to work. The zoo director can’t really do that. I can have the philosophy of doing that, but to make it happen, the community had to do that.
