I never visited a zoo until I walked through the gates of Riverbanks Zoo, which was under construction on January 3rd, 1973. I’d never been to a zoo. Never dreamed of working in a zoo. It was not on my radar. I actually was very interested in going to graduate school and studying ornithology. And I have to give a little history here of how this all came about, but Columbia, South Carolina at the time, and we’re talking now, we’re in back in the early 1960s, was a very uninspired place. It was the state capital but had nothing to brag about. No real, other than a few city parks.
