I wanted to start a docent program at St. Louis. With Marlin’s support, we started a little docent program and I trained, I personally trained the docents and Jerry and Bob Fru and Mike Fleig helped me with classes to make them knowledgeable, to help take some of the school groups or to assist with the school groups. That was kinda frowned upon by some of the old timers at the zoo. Quite frankly, Henry Sanders and Hattie Ettinger didn’t like the idea of volunteers around. So that program kind of died. But when I became director, I was able to start it up again and got a docent program goin’. Our education department at the St. Louis Zoo is beyond my dreams. We have a whole big visitors center with auditorium and many classrooms and a staff of probably about 25 people in the education department.
