1955, my father was fascinated by working with exotic animals in vet school. Actually the head of the department was also the zoo director in Manhattan, Kansas at the Sunset Zoo. So he had applied for a job at the San Diego Zoo and didn’t get it. And Charlie Schroeder told him that the National Zoo was looking to hire their first full-time veterinarian and lo and behold, he got it. And we moved there in 1955 and he was the veterinarian. And I literally that first year went in every Saturday morning with him. That was the day he did sort of rounds and necropsies. So the funny story I heard years later was I was fascinated by watching the necropsies, how long the intestines on a sloth were.
