They were all personal friends of Gladys Porter, and while she was still alive, they would come. We had Miss Kitty from “Gun Smoke Fame”, Amanda Blake was a stalwart and she was there at least four or five different fundraising times. And I got to know and adore her. She’s really quite a character. She and her husband, Mr. Gilbert, were into cheetah breeding. So she was not only a friend of Gladys Porters, but she was also intimately interested in animal welfare and in saving endangered animals. After Gladys passed away, and didn’t have all of these personal contacts, we didn’t have so many celebrities come in, but by then Zoofari was an established, it was the major fundraiser in the Rio Grande valley for a number of years. After people saw how successful we were, the McAllen Historical Museum and the McAllen Art Museum, and some of the other institutions in the area started having similar annual fundraisers, but it was the biggest and it still is the most successful.
