I guess my biggest dream was underwater viewing of polar bears but the zoo is now accomplishing that. It’s under construction as we speak. Be another year before it’s completed. The only problem would be finding polar bears, but they’ve been pretty well assured that there will be captive polar… Read More
And I don’t know that that’s a high priority with the administration at this time or not. Time will tell. People in zoos. Read More
Are there any ideas, new ideas, old ideas to go about getting people to come to zoos that you particularly like or would endorse or they work for you?… Read More
How important do you feel it is for animal keepers and curators to see other zoo exhibits in the United States or around the world as part of their professional growth?… Read More
I think it’s very important that the curators participate in the North American Zoo Association and that they visit as many zoos as possible. I feel the same way with the keepers. Every time we buy or sell or ship animals. If we can ship ’em ourselves and let our… Read More
What had you hoped to accomplish at the St. Louis Zoo, but you were unable to finish it?… Read More
Got to Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Zimbabwe. I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 1978. Got to Borneo and Sumatra and New Zealand and Australia and the Amazon, Brazilian Amazon and the Peruvian Amazon. Lots of parts of the world that made me appreciate how important it is to save the wilderness area… Read More
And was this important in fundraising?… Read More
Many of the people that accompanied us on our safaris were people who were members of Zoo Friends. There were climbers in the community, both financially and socially. These are people that later became big donors to the zoo. They get excited and inspire the animals in the wild that… Read More
Were you able to see animals in the wild and how did it help ultimately your zoo philosophy?… Read More
I had a lot of opportunity to travel. My first opportunity to travel was actually at the invitation of Bob Dooley who was the assistant director of the Houston Zoo and Jim Doherty from the Bronx Zoo, curator of mammals. We went to Mexico to collect vampire bats and we… Read More
I didn’t have anything to carry the bats in. So I took her overnight bag and punched holes in it for ventilation, put my own clothes in a knapsack, put the bats in that suitcase and I carried that under the seat and brought the bats back to St. Louis. Read More
I make rounds as often as possible. Maybe not to the same department each day, but I make sure that in a week’s time I went to every department and visit with each curator. And the appropriate keepers that were on there, went to visit ’em. Looked at the exhibits. Read More
How important you think that is?… Read More
I think it’s very important. I think an ongoing relationship with the keepers, the grounds crew, the maintenance people with the director. And the way I operated was an open door. Anybody could come to me, even the volunteers could come to me with a complaint. And very often when… Read More
How involved were you in the day-to-day activities and hands-on when you were director?… Read More
Did you make rounds?… Read More
I think early in my career, we created the concept for the cheetah survival center. We had a pair of cheetahs in the old lion house that never bred. There’s been some success on very few zoos, but some private breeding ranches where they had cheetahs in large outdoor enclosures… Read More
And I said, “We have this idea that we’d like to take.” We had two pair of cheetah. Pair of cheetahs at the lion house and a pair of cheetahs at the small mammal house. We thought we’d like to move ’em out to where the buffalo are, get rid… Read More
Then we retrofitted the bison yard, made a cheetah survival center out of it. And then we bought two cheetahs from Amanda Blake, Miss Kitty from “Gunsmoke”. She and her husband had a ranch near Phoenix, Arizona and they were successful in breeding cheetahs. And we bought two female cheetahs,… Read More