I was encouraged to go to that meeting by my local zoo colleagues at Seneca Park Zoo. I went, I met the then director, Clayton Freight, who just sort of took me under his wing. And he said, I’ll talk you around. You know, I’ll talk to you around. We’ll… Read More
We gotta get some paperwork cleared up. He says, “But I think we have a position for you. I don’t wanna make any promises other than be patient with me, and we’ll get this taken care of.” I said, “Okay, great,” I came home from that conference and I was… Read More
The only promise that you have to make to me is that you will finish your college education,” because that was during the period when I was four courses short. So I assured him of that, went home, said, we’ve got a job. We all agreed that it was the… Read More
What happened to Dr. Goss?… Read More
When you get some zoo experience, please write us back and we’ll see if we have any available positions.” And I was left with this quandary. Read More
Okay, how do you get a zoo position?… Read More
How do you get zoo experience, if you can’t get hired by a zoo in any position. And then the second one came from Milwaukee County Zoo and it came from the then director, George Spydell, who wrote this very nice, and I still have it, handwritten note that said,… Read More
I was looking for any kind of starter position to essentially get my foot in the door, get my feet wet and to see whether this was something that I wanted to do. And we were really more than willing to walk away from family, walk away from friends, walk… Read More
Write the letters, what happens?… Read More
I wrote all of these letters. 1965, I wrote all, this is 1965, and I wrote all of these letters and there must have been, oh, easily more than two dozen letters directed specifically at that time, to either the director or the curator, whoever it might be, providing, you… Read More
When we had that family converse, when we had a family conversation about, okay, what’s next?… Read More
What do we do?… Read More
I had done just about everything that I could possibly do at the university in terms of procedures and learning and perfecting surgical techniques and learning how to take care of animals. And I knew that I was being directed or driven to use the skills that I had in… Read More
And as this is ongoing, you’re thinking about, was it a driving passion that I think I now wanna work at a zoo?… Read More
Or was it just another place you felt you could use your talent to earn money and enjoy the job?… Read More
And it would have small mammals in it, because it was during an era when nobody paid attention to any of those things. Read More
Your wife was happy with this?… Read More
Well, I have to tell you that my wife, Gail, is somewhat short of a saint because during her childhood, in the home that she was raised in, she never even had a goldfish. So there was a significant period of not adjustment, but a learning, and she was very… Read More
Pados, hamsters, dwarf hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, almost anything that one could reproduce in a small area, small amount of space. And then you were, selling them. Selling the babies as an added source of income. Read More
Where did you get these animals?… Read More