Interview 2817 – Caption Index: 304
I mean, he was nice guy and everything, but he had his own agenda and it certainly didn’t include maintaining the zoo in a manner that it needed to be maintained and the same thing with Front Royal. Read More
I mean, he was nice guy and everything, but he had his own agenda and it certainly didn’t include maintaining the zoo in a manner that it needed to be maintained and the same thing with Front Royal. Read More
Going back to your job on the time you were there, what was your favorite job and the positions?… Read More
And every time you would talk to Mike about can we bring in this, can we bring in that, he would never say no, but when you went after the resources to get what we were asking for, we couldn’t get the money. Read More
What year we’re talking about?… Read More
We are talking about ’84 through 1999, long time, 18 years. And he did finish Amazonia, which I give him credit for, but that was already on the books. And he built invertebrates, which was a pretty nice exhibit. Beck managed to get his O line, which was the orangutan… Read More
And I haven’t been there for awhile, but I don’t think it’s changed that much since I was there last. So the German zoos were okay, but I don’t know. I just wasn’t that impressed with their exhibits. I thought they could have done a lot better job, at least… Read More
What had you hoped to accomplish, but were unable to finish?… Read More
Well, if you’re talking about the first time, I would’ve liked to have seen a lot of the exhibits that needed to be totally knocked down and rebuilt done, and that never happened. I would have liked to have seen the collection change from what it turned into. And that… Read More
Now, you got to go back there and we’ve got animals in there that are hurt.” I mean, I had a number of issues where he wouldn’t come up prepared or he’d come up and he wouldn’t do what I thought should be done. I mean, he was an okay… Read More
And you said you’d worked for many directors, who had the greatest influence on you and why?… Read More
I’d have to say Reed, obviously, Bill Conway, I mean, I’d go up the Bronx and I would just be amazed at what he did with that zoo, not only the exhibits, but the collection. I mean, Lincoln Park. Lincoln Park, I kind of looked at it as my favorite… Read More
And who was Clint Gray?… Read More
I got along with Gray really well, but I mean, as a veterinarian, we had some serious disagreements. And one of the disagreements was that he constantly would come, we’d call him about a problem, and he would constantly come up and then say, “I gotta go back and get,”… Read More
He said, “I got to go back and get my stuff.” And I said, “For Christ sake Clint, I told you what was wrong?… Read More
Why in the world did you come up to look at what I told you what happened?… Read More
So just throwing out a name, Devra Klein, who was she?… Read More
Her work. Well, obviously she was an extremely important scientists, especially, I mean, not just for the National Zoo, but worldwide. And aside from her in-depth work on giant pandas. I mean, she did a huge amount of research work on golden lion tamarins. And I mean, she worked really… Read More
And I mean, you had to be somewhat delicate in working with her. I mean, she wanted to do something, we tried to get some changes in the panda operation and it took a lot of work to get some of the, keeping pandas together longer or not longer as… Read More
Actually the facility in Frankfurt does. Bronx, in fact, I mean, it wasn’t their nocturnal facility, but I was really impressed with how they did the Bird House and just how well they did the naturalistic exhibits in the Bird House. And I retained that when we were looking at… Read More
I got a lot of keepers together and they volunteered to do it on their spare time or on their own time. They’d come in and with the exception of the really huge exhibits in the back, all those exhibits would build in house by keeper staff. And I did… Read More