And one of the most important people early, early on in that work was Marshall Field. Marshall came to my office one day, and we sat and visited a little bit. And he said, “Les, I wanna help the Old Zoo move ahead.” And I thought, well, you know, he’s just saying that, a lot of people say they wanna be helpful. But by golly Marshall, two, three days a month would make time to go with me to call upon various foundations, corporations, business leaders, and really help start raising big time dollars to redevelop the Old Zoo. And so that kind of era of volunteerism just grew into all facets, whether it was fundraising, whether it was education, whether it was physical stuff at the zoo. Marlin had finished the Children’s Zoo, but I was having such good luck with some births that we built a little Zoo Nursery as part of the Children’s Zoo building, and we staffed it with volunteers. And I think that they were probably the most committed people in town because that was such a special opportunity for someone to be able to play with a baby tiger or a baby chimp. These women never took a day off, they were scared to death they might be fired, and someone else would get that slot.
