A very supportive wife through this whole process. I mean, many hours, you know, hitting the books and not paying attention to my family. But she was extremely supportive and that made it all possible. I look back on it now and, you know, when I finally did get my… Read More
Nobody’s pushing you into it. So now, from 1969 to 2007, you worked at the San Diego Zoo, but you started in 1969 at San Diego. Read More
And sure enough, you know, he was very perceptive and I hit the wall a couple of times saying, why am I trying to do all this?… Read More
You gotta come back to that and that’s gotta be the thing that drives you. Read More
‘Cause when you hit the wall, and you’re going to hit the wall, when the caseload or workload gets so great that you’re wondering, why am I doing this?… Read More
And I said yeah, it is what I want to do. And I think I probably had one really strong mentor who wasn’t even in the animal business at all. He was actually a psychologist who had been doing some work at San Diego and we just hit it off… Read More
I mean, they questioned it, you know, is this really what you want to do?… Read More
And, but they were all supportive. Read More
It’s in business administration and then I have a master’s degree in business as well. Read More
No, it was actually not teachers so much as some of my close friends, you know, why are you killing yourself holding down a full-time job and trying to, you know, attain a master’s degree and a PhD at the same time?… Read More
So when you were going to school, did you have any teachers that influenced you and helped you make some of these decisions or not?… Read More
Right In what?… Read More
So you pursued your PhD?… Read More
I said, you know, I think I wanna be a zoo director. I got a little taste of that, believe it or not, at ZooTampa, when there was a directorship change and they put two of us in charge to manage the zoo. We shared the responsibility. Read More
And at that point, I said you know what?… Read More
I don’t wanna be a zoo director. I wanna stay with the animal side of this business. And so I continued with my schooling, finished my PhD, and that’s where that all ended up. But, you know, I decided I’d rather, you know, if I’m going to be a director,… Read More
What kind of schooling did you have?… Read More
Well, went through, you know, all the elementary school and again, really focusing on taking my father’s business over, when I graduated from high school that was where I was gonna head. And then I got the bug, when I went to the zoo I got hooked and that took… Read More
I said, you know, I really wanna work at the zoo and I wanna work with wildlife. And he was great. He said you do what you want to do. You could always fall back on this if something doesn’t happen, doesn’t work out for you, but you do what… Read More
I didn’t go to zoos when I was growing up. San Diego was probably the first one. And I can remember riding my bicycle. It was like five miles from our house riding down there, watching the Sea Lion show. You know, walking around the zoo and enjoying it. And… Read More