Interview 3934 – Caption Index: 306
But calling us a zoo, that didn’t start to happen until probably 20 years down the road before I started allowing the word to be used. Read More
But calling us a zoo, that didn’t start to happen until probably 20 years down the road before I started allowing the word to be used. Read More
When you were a member of ACA, as opposed to an associate member professionally involved, you must’ve been one of the few women in the profession?… Read More
I was one of the few women that wasn’t in the education field. There were quite a few educators, there were a couple of vets, but most of the gals, I mean, there were only two or 300 people at these meetings, so there were a few wives. I mean,… Read More
And you mentioned on joining the American Zoo Association, how did that come about?… Read More
Well, I actually joined as an associate member in 1968, before there was a Living Desert, and I went to meetings ’cause you could go to meetings and the meetings were tiny, but you could go to the annual meeting. My first annual meeting that I went to was in… Read More
And so, I got involved with ACA right away before I actually was at Living Desert, and one of my requirements when they hired me was that they would pay my way to an ACA conference every year. Read More
Living Desert?… Read More
In your master plan, did the Living Desert start to shift in approach to conservation, or was it always part of what you were doing when you talked about the breeding and management of endangered species?… Read More
It was always part. I mean, even when, initially we didn’t have anything besides plants on the ground. I mean, in my mind there were the endangered species part would eventually come. Read More
Completely. Yeah. Were people starting to call Living Desert a zoo or was this a word that you- Not yet. No, and we didn’t call it a zoo. We called it Living Desert. We started out Living Desert Reserve. Then I lopped the word reserve off because I said it… Read More
People still refer to it as the Reserve and so forth, but the bottom line is we just became the Living Desert. We weren’t the Living Desert Zoo. We were just the Living Desert for a very, very long time before because again, there was some sort of, in some… Read More
And so, we need to do this. We were also a member of the AABGA, the American Association of Botanical Gardens. And I said, “No, we have to be.” And I was a great believer in professional memberships and these kinds of organizations, because we were so far in the… Read More
Actually, was that I knew it was a gal and she loved the desert as much as I did, although she was a art history major from Stanford and a mother of three daughters. Her husband had passed away. She was young, but she loved the desert, she loved being… Read More
So, I said to her one day, “I need a curator of education at Living Desert, somebody to help me explain the desert to people and develop a program for kids and adults and everything else, would you like to do that?” And she thought it would be great fun… Read More
But whatever she thought she would be good and useful as a mother herself and trying to teach her own daughter, she just brought all of that to the table. And so, I got really lucky and I just turned her loose and she was there for 25 years building… Read More
She was successful in getting the community engaged?… Read More
He would tell his colleagues, “You know what I used to do?… Read More
At night when nobody was around, we’d bring stuff from Living Desert.” (laughs) And we had more fun, but he was a great resource for us and other human doctors would occasionally look at things for us and local vets. And when Kevin would need a day off, we’d have… Read More
What kind of vision or programs were you charging this first person to develop and were you looking to target children or any audience, or what was that initial push that you wanted?… Read More
You gotta be happy about it,” or did you build it and then when the vet you hired, you said, “This is what part of your job is while you’re down here?… Read More