We have bones, skulls, furs, all kinds of things that a teacher can come like a library and take out one of these plastic boxes. A mammal box, bird box, reptile box they can take to their school, use it in the classroom and then bring it back. So that… Read More
How did that come about?… Read More
Was Marlin still director and what was your title?… Read More
I’ve watched our library grow and develop at our zoo. It was a resource for me as I developed. I went to it often. We established a library in our education department. We made it available for staff at any time, but we also made it available to teachers. It… Read More
When I worked as a keeper at the reptile house, we were also responsible for keeping the hospital clean. We didn’t have a full-time veterinarian. He only came one day a week, four hours a day. Four hours in that one day. Any animal died, we had to go pick… Read More
Let me see it. Lemme see that,” and he would diagnose it. Write down his autopsy form and he say, “Okay, throw that away.” Well we’d cut off the head and save the skull. Sometimes if it was a giraffe, we’d saved the neck bone. We’d save the femur from… Read More
And that picture by the way is used in St. Louis publications quite often. I went out, took pictures around the zoo and I brought ’em back and he critiqued them. He told me which ones were good, which ones were bad composition. I didn’t have the light in the… Read More
You get photo credit on that picture of Marlin when they use it?… Read More
No, I don’t think so. To this day, I don’t think I have. By the way, he did have an eight-by-10 copy made and wrote on it with a felt pen, “To Charlie Hoessle, a great zoo professional who I know will get even better.” And I have that somewhere… Read More
How important do you think a library is to a zoo?… Read More
We have people studying behavior. We have programs going on in the Galapagos, Africa, India, all over the world. All of these things are a role of the zoo. But also doing these good things help in fundraising. Fundraising not only for conservation and for our research but fundraising for… Read More
Can you tell us a little about your talk in continued education, that the story of Marlin giving you a camera and how that came about?… Read More
In the early ’60s which would’ve been about ’64, Marlin called me up to his office and he said, “I want you to build up a slide. When you give your lectures, you should be able to have a slide collection to enhance your lectures. So I want you to… Read More
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… Read More
And education is probably one of the most biggest components of the zoo. We say in St. Louis there are four basic components of a zoo. Recreation is number one. People come to the zoo to have fun. Education, number two. You educate ’em. They don’t mind being educated. So… Read More
And conservation has to begin at the zoo. We have to have conservation programs. And fourth of all, we have to have research programs. Those are the four dimensions of the zoo: recreation, education, conservation and research. So we do research learning about medical aspects. That’s through the veterinarian department. Read More
When I started the education program at the zoo, it was kind of a hobby. But Marlin was very keen in developing education program that education was a strong component of the zoo. And there was a time when he and Carol were supposed to go to Colorado Springs for… Read More
“Let him find out how they’re doing it, what they’re doing it.” And so I got a chance to go to my first national meeting taking a train from St. Louis to Denver, Denver to Colorado Springs. We stayed at Broadmoor Hotel which was a very impressive hotel. I got… Read More
She had animals. She had a snake. She had a kitten of some sort. I don’t remember, maybe a fennec fox and a llama and she would go to the school. But then she would get out and she’d do a zoo presentation, but then she would give out applications… Read More
Okay, was that when you were director?… Read More