I go in there and take my own people. I did have to hire a gunnite company, by the way. It was some guys. They do gunnite around here. It wasn’t the fanciest gunnite, but by golly, it covered those block walls. We built a little pool out of there… Read More
And I said, “I just need some help.” I didn’t ask for a dime. He said, “So what do you wanna do?” I said, “I want to take this elephant.” The old elephant habitat, by the way, had kangaroos in it. I said, “I wanna take the elephant yard.” A… Read More
“I know it will ’cause we have “the world’s first gorilla born here.” See I know about Cola. I knew that when I was first starting my business here in the fifties. he said, “Okay, what’s it gonna take?” I said, “I don’t know, might be 75,000.” I just that… Read More
“If he can’t get out, the gorillas can’t get out. “Outstanding idea! I’m gonna come out there tomorrow. “I’m gonna give you $50,000, “come out there tomorrow.” If you saw the picture in my book, he comes out here. He has a hand-written check from him personally, not even with… Read More
Colo was born here in 19, as I said, ’56, right?… Read More
I get here in ’78. The gorillas are in bars, like a lot of places. The gorillas never seen basically good daylight. They had a little outside thing. Never touched grass. Never had a little pool to wade in the water, like some gorillas do. I said to myself, I… Read More
I got to find somebody. That’s when I went to a man named Mr. McConnell. I read about him in the paper, I didn’t even know the guy. Took me six, I don’t know, two or three months to even get in to see the guy. Finally, I kept calling,… Read More
What was your first big development at Columbus Zoo, your first big development?… Read More
All right. The first big development at the Columbus Zoo was really, I would say one of the major turnarounds of the zoo, and that was putting the gorillas outside for the first time in history. Colo, the oldest gorilla in, the oldest gorilla in the world today, in a… Read More
Last night, I spoke to them, I try to do as much as I can. And I thanked them because, “I know you’re thinking, “everybody’s pats you on the back because of you, “we wouldn’t be here. “I can tell you now, everybody, I would not be here. “The zoo… Read More
If they do it the second time, they’re out of here. The docents is just as important to this zoo, as Jack Hanna or anybody else. Okay. Read More
What was, okay?… Read More
You kidding me?… Read More
And I must say, at first I wasn’t that much aware of it, when I first got here. But I had only been here three months, I said to myself, these docents were put in the giraffe house, that old giraffe house we had here. It stunk so bad, you… Read More
Did you start volunteers in the zoo?… Read More
No, the volunteers were started here. The docents were here. Maybe there were 20 or 30 when I got here. There are over, we can’t do them all right now. It was, I think 400 plus. And these are full-time docents. They not only are the backbone of the zoo. Read More
You have to have the volunteers and you treat them like they’re your family. You treat them like every, you let them know exactly what’s going on. Before that wasn’t happening. The, oh, these are volunteer docents, they’re just volunteers. You know, let’s don’t let them have a pop. Let’s… Read More
Obviously, you kidding me?… Read More
They’ve done great work, their research is above anybody, but they went through that issue at times, because when you don’t have to worry about anything, you’ve got everything handed to you. You’re going to have a problem. And so here we know what we have to do. That’s my… Read More
Now did you have, what’s your opinion about volunteers in the zoo?… Read More