I said, “What we need before we need an elephant,” I said, “What I wanna do, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it, we need to form an organization to help the zoo in many ways.” So that’s what I thought maybe the 2030 Club would… Read More
So we did. Read More
So this was part of your vision for the zoo?… Read More
Yeah, it wasn’t specifically Friends of the Zoo or support organization. The vision was get the community involved. And that was a good way to do it. That was one way to do it and a good way to do it. Read More
And that all came, that’s something a small zoo can do. I mean, if you’ve got a resource in your community, join forces with that resource. So that was a good thing. And so I came in October ’63, and in April ’64 we formed the Topeka Friends of the… Read More
Was Friends of the Zoo your idea or did people come to you?… Read More
No, it was my idea, I actually had a fella come to me though and say he’s with a local club, it’s not the Jaycees. It’s called the 2030 Club. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with ’em, but you have to be between 21 and 39 and you have… Read More
He said, “We wanna buy an elephant for the zoo.” I said, “Whoa, the last thing we need now is an elephant.” That’s like giving a subway to the city of Topeka, nice but what we’re gonna do with it?… Read More
But what if somebody comes to Topeka and they walk, what’s it look like?… Read More
And they walked through and I said, “Yeah, we got some broken sidewalks. I’ll try to get those fixed, but what can we fix?” There’s mud on the sidewalks, the chainlink’s falling off the guardrail, branches fell down from the last windstorm are still there. When they would clean out… Read More
And then letting the people know, we have some fascinating animals here. We’ve got maybe not much, but a neat little zoo here. We need your support, come out and see us. And I started giving a lot of talks and so on. But this diet business, we had a… Read More
Get that established, clean up the commissaries. Stop the carcasses on the road. Start getting the meat from Hill’s packing plant, which slaughtered the horses right here in Topeka, down by the river. Clean that up. Clean the zoo up. Clean the keepers up. Get some khaki uniforms. They didn’t… Read More
And so I had to fill in and be a keeper. Well, of course the regular keepers then would always booby trap me. First of all, they’d leave all the dirty jobs until it’s my turn to do their run. And then they would always put the hose, it was… Read More
And it was get done as fast as you can, and go sit and have coffee and talk and, and so we’re gonna walk through zoo like a visitor. Now play like, we didn’t charge admission, any of that stuff, but I said, say you live in Topeka. You hear… Read More
They didn’t do exactly that. Mr. Cully, he called, well, I called him after I got the offer. And he gave me a cautionary endorsement, sort of thing. He said, “They need a lot of work over there, but we think you can do it.” We, ’cause his wife has… Read More
I had a lot of colleagues, a few I knew at the time who called me and say, “We’re never gonna hear from you again. That is professional suicide.” If you leave Fort Worth or that new herp building and all the exciting stuff that’s going on there and all… Read More
(Gary chuckling) When you got there as director, what were the top items, procedures, things that you wanted to address or enhance?… Read More
Well, number one was animal diets. I’m no nutritionist, but I could tell that this feeding garbage to them, it wasn’t, sometimes the food may have been acceptable. It was the concept, that’s number one, was the concept. And they were not balanced diets even if it was fresh produce… Read More
You mean within a profession?… Read More
Well, the former zoo directors that you worked for before. Read More