Obviously you run the inner workings of it. It evolved, in a way, I guess it needed to, it wasn’t 100% what I might’ve envisioned at the time, but I might’ve been wrong, actually. I mean, I felt like after awhile we were getting too involved in what ought to… Read More
Recognized that in myself very early on. So, but can I argue that maybe it got too bureaucratic or it went to the wrong, I don’t know. For me, I’m at some level, an old time zoo director that believes in the park and the animals first and serving your… Read More
Do I feel sometimes they get too intrusive?… Read More
I think I was feeling some of that, but not enough to start raging or creating new organizations like some of my colleagues attempted to do either. Read More
Well, was I on some crusade?… Read More
No, but when the opportunity came along and I wasn’t on any other committee at that point in time, I said, “Sure, I’ll serve on the Ethics Committee. I’d be glad to do that and help write some…” We were reworking some of the ethics rules at that time and… Read More
With ACA, do you think, did ACA evolve into something that you had envisioned it?… Read More
Why did you choose to work on this committee?… Read More
Because they asked me to (laughs). I mean, I like to think of myself as an ethical person. And I think the Oregon, at that point when I was on it and a little bit before, the ethics of what you could do in a zoo were changing from the… Read More
What were some of your more frustrating times as leader of the Living Desert?… Read More
Well, I think the same frustration anybody feels in that kind of a job which is that there’s always more to do than you have money to do it, always. It’s endless. It never stops. The day it stops you’re probably not doing your job right. So, at some level,… Read More
“Here, spend it.” And it may not be what they want, but they knew they were gonna get it. I never knew I could even get what I had because I had to go out every day and make sure that the tills were ringin’. There was nobody that said… Read More
Nobody had to argue their point with me ’cause I grew up in that situation from the day I was a little kid. There was no money and if I wanted to do something, I had to go work and get the money and do it. It made sense to… Read More
I did everything I could to make sure that they had money to go to professional meetings. So, I mean, my first garden, my first curator of education, Sue, started going right away to ACA annual meetings to find out there were people out there that, and I encouraged her… Read More
And if they didn’t wanna do that, then I didn’t want ’em around. Read More
How did your style of being a director evolve and change or did it, and what was it?… Read More
I suppose it did evolve as I matured, but at the same time, I think the basic principle was always the same, which is I just, I knew I was fortunate to have been somehow or other had been in the right place at the right time to be given… Read More
And I was that way to the day I left Living Desert. If you did your job really well, and I was happy with the result, you might never see me and the less you saw of me, the happier I was with you. They always knew I was there… Read More
Relationship with your staff, how did you start to develop their training and upgrading?… Read More
It’s been well received?… Read More