The Friends of the Zoo, in the beginning were fabulous. They were the epitome of a community support organization. They were citizens in different spectrums of our society, structure in Topeka who were willing to give of their time and talent, and if they had the finances, to even give of the finances. But it was their enthusiastic support of wanting our zoo to be special and to be better, that I think was so important. And I’ll be forever grateful to them for that. All the little things like, the money for the picnic, for the park department, maintenance crews, and so on, that was all very important. And then getting a publication out and eventually sponsoring the first safari and on and on and on. The zoo schools and the docents.
