Very, very successful. So yeah. So I didn’t have to tell my successor at all what to do. He’d been there forever. He became a zoo guy. Okay. Over his years of experience and step, we just switched titles. He stayed in his office, I stayed in my office. He… Read More
Did you have, you had good relationships with the press. Read More
And he and I had many cups of coffee together feeling each other out, okay. Read More
Going, is this gonna be a plan?… Read More
And Evan Colleen is the zoo’s CEO now. And we had more discussions. And I said to the zoo board, this is the man that we want and this is the man who will be my successor. And Evan came in 14 years ago, 15 years we overlapped. And every… Read More
I said, do you mean you’re taking my zoo away from me?… Read More
You’re gonna do that. You’re gonna go out and be the face of the zoo more than you are now. We’re gonna take you out of the day-to-day operation. Read More
I love the operations of the zoo. Once I calmed down and thought about it and discussed it more with the zoo board leadership and going, you’re right. They had tried to have the same conversation with me four or five years earlier, but I was too cocky too. And… Read More
And the board said, yeah, and you know, who’s gonna do that?… Read More
I had to get done. I had to get the zoo remodeled physically with great animal exhibits and husbandry. I had to get great education programs going. I had to get financially stable at the zoo. I had to get an increase in conservation. I had to expand the zoo. Read More
When you retired, did you give the news new zoo director any advice? Did they ask?… Read More
And then that exhibit just was, was outta date. Okay. So, you know, we, I tried to build facilities that had flexibility so that if it could hold a small, medium cat, it could also hold a primate. You know, those sorts of things. My little zoo needed flexibility on,… Read More
Nope. Nope. ’cause I was lucky. My successor got handpicked before he, 12 years earlier. He came in as the COO, as the assistant director. And because he brought in all the talents I didn’t have, we were a perfect yin and yang. Okay. The zoo board and our strategic… Read More
Do you think a shelf zoo master plan has a shelf life?… Read More
Yeah, absolutely. I think people who come up with 20 and 30 year plans, what you discover is, gee, that species doesn’t need management anymore. You know, because for some reason or other, I, I, I really think master plans do have a, a a a shelf life. I, I… Read More
And we opened that in 1991. I got there in, in 86 and we, we opened that plaza and everything in 1991. ’cause I said, ’cause my, my, my plan was, okay, here’s this plan for this. We have to get this done before we can raise private dollars to… Read More
Tortoise track, seals, penguins, different eagle experience, different things like that in the historic zoo. And then we did a big major campaign in 2016 to expand the zoo. And that was a big strategic plan. Read More
So whatever you can raise, it’s gotta be your top priority. So that’s what my research is telling me. ’cause I did some real serious research. So we redeveloped the south end, put in a veterinary facility. Okay. ’cause I needed a, we needed a veterinary. We had only one… Read More
’cause you put those lights up last year, you know how to do it. So I volunteered putting up place at the zoo even after I retired. What would you say? You said you had changed the zoo and built a lot of stuff. Read More
Not early on, because so much of it, I needed to get a master plan, but that wasn’t cost money. So it took a while to get, get a, a, a master plan and all early on I could raise funds to redevelop different areas, but I could never redevelop… Read More