Yes, we were- It was just Cincinnati Zoo. It became the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. We were afforded that status as a botanical garden. We in fact went through a rather difficult process. We had a lot of our landscaping we had to label, which is now labeled. So… Read More
What were the most important factors at the zoo when you came in or as you progressed, was it the public, the animal exhibits, breeding programs, education?… Read More
How did they start to rank with you?… Read More
Was Cincinnati’s hiring of a horticulturist a first in the zoo world?… Read More
The hiring of Dave Ehrlinger, our first horticulturist, if it wasn’t a first in the zoo world, it was among the very few zoos that had a professional horticulturist on staff, and Dave was an excellent person to work with. He left the zoo after I did. I think he’s… Read More
You changed the name of the zoo, didn’t you?… Read More
And in fact, I would really challenged my architects because I didn’t want- We developed moats, but I didn’t want to see the moat. And that would have them with a model on their hands and knees measuring, but we accomplished some of that in an exhibit that we built… Read More
There was a sense of cohesiveness about the organizations and a lot of that was done through landscaping. So we made a commitment that we came back home, we put all our notes together, we made a commitment that we were gonna make the Cincinnati Zoo a botanical garden. Not… Read More
You don’t even see a building, you only see an entryway that’s landscaped. And we did that with the gorilla exhibit. We essentially covered the old lion house with stonework and outdoor caging. So eventually you began to see the loss of a lot of buildings. The zoo over a… Read More
So that was some of the major changes in the zoo, and they were the ones that were received best by our visiting public too. When I was in Melbourne, I was fascinated by the Melbourne Zoo that they had a special floral festival. So every spring now, and it’s… Read More
What were the top items that you wanted to address or enhance when you first walked in?… Read More
What was on your list?… Read More
Some of the first things I addressed when I entered the Cincinnati Zoo, some of the things that bothered me a lot, the zoo had a lot of concrete, had a lot of tarmac, very few planted areas. And over the years they had blacktopped a lot of ground area… Read More
The condition of the zoo when I stepped in was still, still bad. There were attempts- I think over the period of years of Bill’s administration, he was just trying to put it back together to make it an institution that was functional. So he was repairing old buildings, but… Read More
We have what we call the blue laws. All businesses in Cincinnati when I started, were closed on Sunday by law. So, you know, you had everybody, the only place to go was the zoo. Then King’s Island came in with a brand new lion park, and I said to… Read More
The board finally resolved its own problems. It had limited terms and it started to appoint good people to the board and movers and shakers in the community, and together, we really began to rebuild the zoo. We started major fundraising and capital drives. We developed a master plan and… Read More
-Came into the zoo. You were the director. Read More
Sometimes we did things that you might not want to do if you were in a private zoo. We had all kinds of, literally programs that were non-zoo related just to get bodies through the gate. But I realized how important they were. And eventually, we were clever enough and… Read More
We could do that. Being a private zoo, we could select who could come in the zoo or not. So as general curator, you had been starting to make some changes at the zoo. Now you are the zoo director. Read More
What was the condition of the zoo when you took it over?… Read More