And Mike Le Roux was in Vietnam at the time. He eventually came back and worked his way up to zoologist, assistant director, and after I left, he was director for a while. He read it in Stars and Stripes, Pacific Stars and Stripes. So we started getting all these,… Read More
And when we borrowed the koala from San Diego back in 1986, they would call making arrangements and say, this is the other world famous zoo calling. I’ll accept that. (Gary laughs) So it’s been a great thing. Read More
Now having said that, during your career at the zoo, what would you consider to be major events that you saw happen that affected zoos in general, and of course the world famous Topeka Zoo?… Read More
A major event during my career that affected zoos in general, and of course, the world famous Topeka Zoo, oh gosh. A major event, hmm. Well, I don’t know if it’s a major event, but I think economic impact had played a big role, what was it, proposition 13 or… Read More
Topeka? World famous Topeka Zoo?… Read More
But I even had a guy who writes crossword puzzles puzzles for the New York Times call and say, “Now I’m doing zoos. I wanna make sure that world famous is part of your official title. (laughs) I said, “Yeah, it’s the world famous Topeka Zoo. That’s our official title.”… Read More
Let’s enter one of those. I said, “Wait a minute. If you do that, people are saying we’re making fun of modern art, or we’re comparing apes with people. I mean, that’s not a good idea.” Oh, no, we’ll say that he’s an orang. So they put his name down… Read More
Air France Magazine did an article, a museum in California wanted to show his paintings. Remember the old television program “What’s My Line?” I was on “What’s My Line?” with some of this paintings. I presented one to the White House. The president of Steuben Glass in New York bought… Read More
How did the name, and why did it happen that the phrase world famous Topeka Zoo was coined?… Read More
Well, frequently I asked, how and why did we become the world famous Topeka Zoo?… Read More
And sometimes it’s with a scoff, (scoffs) what?… Read More
I mean, people would come up with ideas. I’m not really sure how all these ideas come about. (chuckles) They just. Read More
Did Friends of the zoo meet your expectations in the beginning and the goals you thought you wanted to set for them?… Read More
The Friends of the Zoo, in the beginning were fabulous. They were the epitome of a community support organization. They were citizens in different spectrums of our society, structure in Topeka who were willing to give of their time and talent, and if they had the finances, to even give… Read More
And we counted, we were dependent on the Friends of the, the gift shop, started a gift shop, things that we couldn’t do otherwise. The Friends of the Zoo did this. And so they were just fabulous in that regard. Read More
(Gary chuckles) Where did he get all these ideas?… Read More
I don’t know where, all these ideas came from, this just general, part of it from my travels to other zoos, part of it from reading about other zoos, part of it from wondering how to do things new and different that zoos hadn’t done, that could get people involved,… Read More
And sometimes people would say, why don’t we do this?… Read More
Or why don’t we do that?… Read More
And it was a fabulous thing, because the whole community was involved. And the hippo would come in and people would come out to the zoo and say, I ate 500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to help earn that hippo. (chuckles) But getting people involved was great. Let me… Read More