My zoo experience for me has been a very rich and rewarding life. I have no regrets. I have, I have no visions of grandeur. I think I’ve took it, and many times it was, it was a difficult road, but we took it up a notch or two, and… Read More
You’ve mentioned a little about making it better for everybody. In our zoo, in order to enhance attendance through exhibitry, we found that by being very creative, working outside the box often paid in big dividends. Jungle Trails was a classic example of a good exhibit, an immersion exhibit that… Read More
Did you have a travel program at the zoo to bring people out into the wilderness?… Read More
Well, I worked for Marlin Perkins. I came out of Lincoln Park and Marlin was I think the first person to take people back into areas of Africa, and Bill Hoff, my predecessor, came into Cincinnati and he developed a similar program and he expanded on what Marlin was doing. Read More
And it’s still popular today. I think they send two or three trips out a year. We’ve talked about so many different subjects here from the press to politics to animal exhibits and board membership and so many things. Jack of all trades and be master of one. Read More
Did you have a vision for the children’s zoo?… Read More
You had run one. Well, I, and personally, I don’t believe in children’s zoos. I believe the whole zoo should be for children. And that came to me very clearly when I took my grandson and I was visiting a few zoos and my arms at the end of the… Read More
What would you say that zoos can do to enhance their attendance regarding exhibits?… Read More
Lessons learned were be very, very careful and plan your strategy before you go into a meeting with the press. Read More
Do you ever have any surprise donations?… Read More
Anybody bowl you over?… Read More
Yes, we had a two and a half- Gave us two and a half million dollars for a new children’s zoo. That was a windfall that came from Spalding’s. They were lighting manufacturer, husband died. She liked the zoo. She liked the number of board members and she wrote Spalding… Read More
What would happen if you don’t get the levy passed?… Read More
I says, well, get rid of the elephants, which was, I had to, I had a pregnant animal in an area- I had three elephants living in an area for one. Well, four elephants, that would’ve made the fifth. It would’ve been impossible. Well, they took that and they ran… Read More
Lessons learned were?… Read More
Once. We got into a situation with the elephants. It was blamed on my- Well, we attended a newspaper briefing, you know, where the staff were, were sitting down to deal with the news of the day, and we were asked to appear and present. We were gonna go for… Read More
Well, in a time when the public was, they had just funded a new stadium and they found that they had to pay additional sales tax, it was a tax-resistant period in time. Well, at any rate, I had gone into the meeting with the press and one of the… Read More
Were you able to use the political process to get money?… Read More
You’ve mentioned tax levies. We were in a quandary for a long time on moving the zoo forward. And the only way I saw out of this dilemma was that we had to go after tax dollars. Now my board then was composed of many conservatives, and conservatives don’t like… Read More
Did the voters ever turn you down?… Read More