I mean, I met my second wife there, I met my third wife there, not as a keeper, but my second wife was a keeper, so yeah, and there were a lot of relationships that sprung up between the male and female staff. I mean, it was not so much… Read More
Side question, were the policies established about that kind of thing or not at all?… Read More
No. I mean, when I married my second wife, she worked for me. So I had to have her supervised by another curator, which was a little awkward. It was even more awkward when I got divorced, but we’ll talk about that way down the road. Read More
Yeah, I think there was resentment, not only for the first female keeper, but I think there was resentment on the part of a lot of the keepers. And I think to a certain extent, the curatorial staff, I don’t know about Ted, but over the fact that they were… Read More
Did you would have concerns?… Read More
Did I have concerns?… Read More
She was the secretary. Read More
How’s she do?… Read More
She did fine. I mean, she really did. And I don’t know whether I should, I mean, she did fine, and it was a… Tell me what, you seem to hesitate. Well, I mean, she was hired and then she ended up living with with the person that hired her… Read More
Was there resentment with the male keepers for this first female?… Read More
How was it possible for her to break into the all male society?… Read More
Well, she was very good friends with the general curator, well, the reptile curator at the time, and Ted always said, I mean, he always said, “I’ll never hire female keepers because it’s gonna just be a total disruption.’ When I started in ’56, there was one woman, no, excuse… Read More
Tell me about this groundbreaking woman, Brenda Hall, who was she, I mean?… Read More
Yeah, there were problems. I mean, there were problems especially with the minorities, the African-Americans that I had to work with and actually supervise later on, there was a lot of resentment toward me. There was a lot of resentment toward the new keepers that were coming in, that were… Read More
And a lot of them were at ages where they were gonna be able to retire. And a lot of them did retire in the mid to late ’70s. And so we basically started out with a totally new slate of keeper and curatorial staff. Well, in the ’70s the… Read More
How did the first woman to get her job?… Read More
Now, when you got this position as assistant curator in ’72, they just came and said, do you want it, or do you have to apply for it?… Read More
I didn’t apply for work. I’m probably giving away secrets here. But in the federal system, you learn to work within the federal system and you learn that you can do a lot of things even though somebody tells you, you can’t do it. If whoever wants to do it… Read More
So they bumped me up and it was, I find, when I look back on my career in those early years, it was an amazing period personally for me because I advanced so rapidly into so many different positions and a lot of it caused some controversy, but I mean,… Read More
How did these two groups, these different cultures, how they work together, any problems?… Read More