The Friends of the Zoo, in the beginning were fabulous. They were the epitome of a community support organization. They were citizens in different spectrums of our society, structure in Topeka who were willing to give of their time and talent, and if they had the finances, to even give… Read More
And we counted, we were dependent on the Friends of the, the gift shop, started a gift shop, things that we couldn’t do otherwise. The Friends of the Zoo did this. And so they were just fabulous in that regard. Read More
(Gary chuckles) Where did he get all these ideas?… Read More
I don’t know where, all these ideas came from, this just general, part of it from my travels to other zoos, part of it from reading about other zoos, part of it from wondering how to do things new and different that zoos hadn’t done, that could get people involved,… Read More
And sometimes people would say, why don’t we do this?… Read More
Or why don’t we do that?… Read More
And it was a fabulous thing, because the whole community was involved. And the hippo would come in and people would come out to the zoo and say, I ate 500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to help earn that hippo. (chuckles) But getting people involved was great. Let me… Read More
So now we were bringing in all these spectacular, fabulous animals that the zoo had never had, sometimes the state had never had. We had the first giraffes in the state of Kansas, had the first giraffe birth in the state of Kansas. And these are just wonderful things. You… Read More
Where were all these ideas coming from?… Read More
And they would bring their families out and say, we worked on this at the zoo. We worked on that at the zoo. In fact, we even started having a, once the Friends of the Zoo was formed, that was another thing, ’cause then the Friends of the Zoo gave… Read More
The old types of school chairs. But we had a slide projector and a screen. And the things those days were a big deal. And through the Friends of the Zoo, we started a zoo school program. That was one of the greatest things we could do, because number one,… Read More
And with all due respect to the keepers we had and some of the old-time keepers we had decided that some of ’em would switch over to the park department and do something else, because the zoo was beginning to be more than they wanted to keep up with, I… Read More
And it was wonderful to see all these folks come out. In fact, the zoo got an award from the Shawnee County Mental Health Association. And that’s the things a zoo should do, in my opinion. But building a new building, bringing the animals in and to raise the money… Read More
So then we changed the concept to animals and man, same building, but we changed the theme, the graphics, the way we presented the animals to get the conservation element more in there and the impact of human population expansion in wild areas, on the types of animals that we… Read More
What other things did you wanna do for visitor services when you were director?… Read More
Well, obviously our zoo, when I first came to town in 1963, the first thing we needed to do was clean it up. Second thing was, well, the first thing was to get the animal diets and general management up to a professional level. And then the next thing was… Read More
They have, I don’t know, 45 or 50 parks in the community. And here I was wanting the welder all the time. I wanted the plumber all the time. I wanted the painters and whatever, and we didn’t even have a horticulture, so we had to call in the Park… Read More
It was $250,000, which today is nothing, but in those days was a lot, especially for what we were getting. And was to be paid for by general obligation bonds, the city, and the city commission met every Tuesday night. So it was all set. Five commissioners agreed to approve… Read More
So I went back and said, if the zoo pays for this through admissions, can we build it?… Read More
So that’s how the admission came about. We wanted to do an admission fee anyway, because I just felt it was better. We needed a perimeter fence. So you have to have a perimeter fence to get admission fee. And I just felt if people paid even mammal fee, it… Read More