Interview 5420 – Caption Index: 305
From the past people you worked for?… Read More
From the past people you worked for?… Read More
What’s the first thing you wanted to do?… Read More
You’re the new director, what’s the first thing you wanted to do?… Read More
First thing I wanted do is develop the education department and the children’s zoo even further than it had ’cause now I had the opportunity. That’s with the docent program and began planning a education senate which had new classrooms, new auditorium. That came about in 1985, took three years… Read More
I made sure all my curators got to go to management school, take advantage of any HR training in the area that was available to them. There’s several private programs for executive training. And so I made sure that I surrounded myself with a capable staff and gave them the… Read More
They’re still there running the zoo. So there’s a new person who’s called president replace me. Jeff Bonner who came from Indianapolis Zoo, he’s doing an outstanding job. But he kept in place all the reports that I had and they’re still reporting to him and they’re still running the… Read More
You said, “Now I could do stuff I want.” What was the first thing you did?… Read More
I was scared to death because suddenly I had the responsibility for everything and I knew I had some limitations. Because you know, I came up through the ranks. I only had two years of college, but I had worked with University of Missouri. I had worked with St. Louis… Read More
So I hired a good finance. My director that I followed was a finance officer, he was no longer there. I hired a young but retired finance officer that was a CPO, certified accountant. I brought him in as my assistant director because I knew I needed a good, strong… Read More
When you were again deputy director, did you have mentors who you were kind of leaning on for advice or any of that that you had met or respected in the profession and what were they tellin’ ya?… Read More
Well as I came up through the ranks, I met George Rabb of course listening to his presentations and Bill Conway and Clayton Freiheit from Denver and Gary Clarke at Topeka. These were all colleagues that I could call up and ask for advice and guidance. And of course, many… Read More
My greatest achievement I feel was bringin’ the zoo from show business to scientific aspect conservation research. The four dimensions that the zoo is today: recreation, conservation, research and education. Those are the four dimensions I think our zoo kinda represents and I think most of the major zoos today… Read More
Were you very excited about this?… Read More
Now when you were deputy director and you were working for these other directors, were you communicating with other zoos at the time?… Read More
My entire zoo career at St. Louis Zoo, I had the opportunity to attend the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, their national conferences and many of the regional conferences. In fact as a curator, I served on the Board of Regents the first time with Denny Merritt and… Read More
So I always introduced my new director to AZA. I brought him for the first time to the zoo conference and introduced him to other zoo people. Read More
I’ve never seen that. First of all at the reptile house in El Paso, Texas, there was a reptile contract, reptile garden run by a guy named Jerry Tordt. And he had in this reptile house a snake pit that was a brick wall surrounding a moat and there was… Read More
And there were similar shows in Florida. Ross Allen did regular reptile shows where they would actually milk rattlesnakes and the venom was sold to manufacturers of antivenin where they would inject snake venom into a horse and then take the horse serum and make antivenin. So there were demonstrations. Read More
And Jim Alexander came out. He had an eagle trained to the gauntlet and an owl and he would tell the difference between the owls, nocturnal birds of prey and the hawks and eagles as diurnal birds of prey and the value of the predator/prey relationship. So there have been… Read More
Animal rides?… Read More