As I became more and more involved in education, it was a one-man department. So I cleaned cages in the morning and the afternoon. Sometimes I would stop at 10:00 and start doin’ the school tours. And then after 2:30 when the school buses left, then I go back and finish my duties. As the education department staff began growing, my first assistant was a part-time secretary who took care of the phone calls from the teachers and booked the classes for me and mailing the confirmation for the school visits and began helping me make schedules. Then I was added an assistant curator. We had a zookeeper Ed Schmidt who was a reptile keeper at that time at the zoo. He was promoted to assistant curator of education, then there were two of us.
