Probably the most important thing was letting me work with all these different animals. His strengths were, he knew he loved the animals, and he knew that the zoo revolved around the animals, and he knew it was for the public. And he wanted that zoo to a good for… Read More
So I learned that a clean zoo is a good zoo, so to speak. And the zoo was free. There was no perimeter fence. And on Sundays, it was a 12-hour day. You start at 8:00 am and we keep the zoo open till 8:00 pm, because of the long… Read More
You gonna be a zoo director someday?” (chuckles) And I hadn’t even thought about that quite honestly. So I didn’t really learn much from them. But Benny Henry, yes, he was a wonderful guy. I learned a lot from him. But Mr. Cully called me in the office one day… Read More
But I know George Vierheller at St. Louis, and they have a big reptile collection there. And I could probably get you on there. Or if you wanna be a general zoo man, then I’ll let you work with every species we have in all areas of the zoo. Not… Read More
Well, What were, so it sounds like you had a good relationship with him. Read More
What other things did you learn from him and what were his strengths and his weakness?… Read More
(chuckles) What a marvelous question. There, and I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but there was no curatorial staff. Mr. Cully was a knowledgeable experienced zoo man, an animal man, and then became an administrator and a construction man and development man, everything you need to be to be a zoo… Read More
And he was, we didn’t use the term nerd in those days, but if we had, he would have been the nerd. But he was a very positive, pleasant guy. And I learned a lot from him too. But then he went off to other zoos. So knowing there was… Read More
It was very disheartening. And it had a very small zoo library. Read More
And during my lunch hour, I’d always be reading books up there, which they scoffed at, “Huh, who’s this kid reading all these books?… Read More
Did you interact with the curatorial staff?… Read More
Did people stay on in their different areas?… Read More
Did they talk to one another? How did they interact?… Read More
And then outside, they had the bear pits and they were like the old postcards. We all have those old postcard, where the bars went up and curved over the top. But they had a American black bears, grizzly bears, polar bears. And then they had the grottoes built by… Read More
I’m sure Mr. Cully was thinking of the African Plains at the Bronx and he wanted to model it after that to some extent. He didn’t have lions over a boat, looking in, but he did have this collection of hoofstock. So together on the veldt, running together were zebras,… Read More
So, I mean, that was an exciting zoo for me. I wished it had more reptiles. Birds, they didn’t have a lot of birds, but some, mostly predatory birds. So it was a pretty neat. Read More
And he said, “You did okay, kid.” And he told Mr. Cully. And so that was it. Read More
What was the zoo like though when you first started, what was its physical makeup?… Read More
It was, there’s no perimeter fence. It was one main, what they called, a lot of zoos had this, I guess, the main zoo building, and this was built 1909. And it was one of these combination buildings. There was a row of barred cages on one side of the… Read More
They’ve expanded it and improved it since then. So they put hippos in the interior and a pool. And primates units for like red patas monkeys and green monkeys, mona monkeys. On the other side, a few reptiles. And at the far end was the elephant stall. And they had… Read More