I’m a blonde in the zoo business. I’m a green-eyed person and this is the organization for green-eyed people in the zoo business.” I said, “Isn’t it that nonsense?” “Well, yeah.” I said, “Well, to me it’s as much nonsense to have a woman in the zoo business organization.” Just… Read More
I just did my job and I tried to be a really good director, I tried to be fun, just like them, go out and have a good time. And I was quickly accepted to the point where sometimes they’d forget I was even in the room as a woman,… Read More
Did you get others zoo directors, or who were some of your, did you have mentors and other zoo directors that you as a young director would go to and they would mentor you?… Read More
You’ve gotta mentor women.” I said, “No, no, no. I’ll mentor any zoo professional. If they think I have something to offer ’em, I’ll tell ’em. Read More
I said, “But why do you want to have, why do you want it?… Read More
You wanna be equal. You wanna just be part of the team. Read More
It doesn’t make any difference that I’m a woman. You just have to be good at what you do. Just do it.” And then they, Betsy Dresser decided to start a woman in zoo biology. Read More
Remember those days?… Read More
And the first person she came to is me. Read More
She said, “We want you to be our founder,” and I went, “I refuse to join.” And she said, “Why?… Read More
How were you received by your male counterparts?… Read More
Well, it’s hard to know from their real perspective. From my perspective, I consciously made a decision that seemed to be perfectly rational to me at the time which is if I really wanted to be, I really wanted to build Living Desert and I really wanted to make it… Read More
And so when we decided, when they voted in 1971 to separate from the National Parks and Rec’s, they needed somebody to do their newsletter and I was perfectly capable of doing that from a variety of reasons of vast historical things I had done in my professional career and… Read More
Living Desert and- And at some point you approached your board, you wanted the zoo to become a associate. Associated with ACA. Yep. And they received that- Fine. I mean, I never just dropped something on ’em. I mean, I tried to educate ’em and they knew I was going… Read More
But calling us a zoo, that didn’t start to happen until probably 20 years down the road before I started allowing the word to be used. Read More
When you were a member of ACA, as opposed to an associate member professionally involved, you must’ve been one of the few women in the profession?… Read More
I was one of the few women that wasn’t in the education field. There were quite a few educators, there were a couple of vets, but most of the gals, I mean, there were only two or 300 people at these meetings, so there were a few wives. I mean,… Read More
And you mentioned on joining the American Zoo Association, how did that come about?… Read More
Well, I actually joined as an associate member in 1968, before there was a Living Desert, and I went to meetings ’cause you could go to meetings and the meetings were tiny, but you could go to the annual meeting. My first annual meeting that I went to was in… Read More
And so, I got involved with ACA right away before I actually was at Living Desert, and one of my requirements when they hired me was that they would pay my way to an ACA conference every year. Read More