Oh yeah. You know, funding, you know, and sometimes you got a great conservation program going, but then the person spearheading it leaves for another opportunity. And if that person was the spearhead and did 90% of the heavy lifting for their project, it, it would do a huge damage… Read More
Oh yeah. And why?… Read More
I had to cancel our, our our Halloween event and everything. The mayor actually canceled Halloween for the city of, city of Lincoln. And, but our power was only out for 12 hours. And so, but we had backup systems, you know, especially for the aquarium, things like that where… Read More
Had, have any of your conservation programs had difficulties getting off the ground?… Read More
Ooh, that’s, that’s, that’s a very good question. We, we, everything that has been built subsequently is concrete, concrete block. Okay. With redundancy locking systems and things like that. Monitoring the zookeepers in particular, monitoring the weather on a 24 hour basis, you know, for, for storms and things like… Read More
So much of our power wa was electric, you know, heat and things like that. So only in all my years, there’s only, like I said, one 12 hour period when a huge snowstorm came through on October 25th. And on October 25th, there’s still lots of leaves on the… Read More
How, how did the zoo prepare you?… Read More
Yes. It took a lot of work. It took very good people to work the pony rights. Absolutely. It took certain kind of ponies. You could just, couldn’t have any kind of pony there. But it was, to me it was very important. Very much a part of the rich… Read More
You’re in Nebraska for natural weather disasters?… Read More
You know, point it’s in, in Nebraska, people still ride horses. Okay. There are equestrian trails. I mean, in Lincoln itself, there are horse trails in Lincoln. And so, you know, there’s, there are a lot of people in interested in, in the equestrian world. And to me, the pony… Read More
I mean, Nebraska’s a very rural state, very agricultural state. It’s our largest economy is agriculture. Okay. But so many people and so many kids have left the farm. Left the ranch, and are are city kids now that I thought it was very important to connect the kids still… Read More
And you mentioned something about when you were at Lincoln Children’s Zoo, did the zoo have pony rides?… Read More
Yes, it did. And what do you think is the benefit of pony rides and what was your philosophy about them?… Read More
We did some collection assistance with each other. Okay. Up, up, up and down. We, we, we didn’t collaborate properly as much as we should have. Okay. Early on there was a little bit sense of competition and probably part of it was my fault too. ’cause I was a… Read More
Right. What was your relationship when you were director with the Omaha Zoo?… Read More
And so she was all excited for us. And then we were ushered into the East Room. The east room where all kinds of big stuff is announced right there by the president. And there we were called up and there’s the first lady presenting us with the recognition, the… Read More
But because the zoo world is a museum, okay, because we curate zoos are part of that, just like botanical gardens are, you know, and nature centers and all kinds of historical museum and natural history museums and art museums. But there was a thing, there’s a competition during, during… Read More
It was quite a lucky experience. It was back when George W. Bush was in the White House. Laura was very, very supportive of museums and libraries. Mrs. Bush was herself a professional museum professional, okay. And when the Bushes were in Dallas, Mrs. Bush sat on the Dallas Zoo… Read More
And that’ll be the Bronx Zoo and in New York City, the, the, the San Diego Zoo in San Diego and the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. And so I got to go to the White House after lots of security checks, take along a coworker and board members, and we were… Read More
So we got together to, to build connectivity, develop professionalism, and develop tourism more in the state of Nebraska, collaborate because it was, again, it was all about collaborating and helping each other become stronger. Read More