I get out there starting to get light at six in the morning. Di the flood water had gone down a lot. And then the back step of the rainforest, which is about as high as this loading dock was about like this table, there was a tart carp about… Read More
How does the zoo, how did you have the zoo prepare for natural weather disasters?… Read More
And once the water backs up, a lot of times, because logs and stuff come to the culvert. But once it backs up on those culvert, then the water comes over the top and actually goes right down between monkey island and Africa and goes out a gate. Now if… Read More
Did you have to deal with any Oh yeah, yeah. Well, a ZA has mandatory yearly drills. It can’t be tabletop drills of the areas and weather, animal escape, et cetera, et cetera. The weather one that we had was flooding. We have a stream that comes right through the… Read More
That’s always an issue when you have a public zoo with a nonprofit support group. But we were, we were able to answer that question, well, we make, makes a good zoo better if you give us money, you know, type thing. So I think we were pretty successful at… Read More
Has zoo education, in your opinion, make any headway in educating the public and the differences between the wellbeing of a creature and the survival of a species?… Read More
Yeah. Yeah. I, I’m not sure. I mean, I, I would like to think people, well I would like to think people come to the zoo and start to understand a little bit more about conservation of species and conservation of wildlife and wild places. Not everybody, but some people. Read More
Now there’s always the zoos, when we talk about LA or Lincoln Park and it’s old days, there’s always some tension between the two groups. PR primarily over sponsorships or something because Metro Parks as a park district sometimes had a sponsorship that, you know, maybe did their hiking trails… Read More
Why do I need to donate to the zoo?… Read More
Not everybody, but people knew that it was part of Metro Parks. But so why do you, I’m paying my taxes. Read More
And we basically invited the press in and tried to include him on everything. And we particularly, again, I mentioned it shortly after, maybe a year or two after I was there, we got this outstanding marketing director, Sue Allen. And she was, she knew by first name, every TV… Read More
And your relationship with the Zoo Society, they were big help to the zoo. Oh yeah. And both Sacramento and Cleveland, and they both grew tremendously. When I was there. I wasn’t the main person, but I certainly was pushing it. And the Zeus Society in Cleveland, for example, was… Read More
Well just not do stupid things and get in trouble, but we were all, one of the strategies we had is we never, if something bad happened, an animal died or whatever. We, we were right out in, we got in front of the story, not behind it. We, when… Read More
I wouldn’t say total surprises, but, you know, we met these people and they said, okay, yeah, that sounds great. And then give us a million dollars type or $2 million maybe. It was a big gift back then. So the, the amount was a surprise. I don’t, didn’t have… Read More
’cause we needed a hospital. It just wasn’t one that was the next one in our mind. But when she said that and gave a nice lead donation, we went with it and it turned out to be very successful. Read More
What were some of your strategies to get the community to embrace the zoo?… Read More
Fundraising. Well, I was involved a lot in both Sacramento and Cleveland. We always had professional development staff, but they used to, I was part of the show and tell and talked to ’em more about the animals and the new exhibits or the new programs. We were trying to… Read More
Not always, sometimes the Ze Society would go take ’em on their own, but I try, I was available to them when they needed me and, and I had no problem with it and learned to be really good. And some of the larger donations from the Spillman who had… Read More
Did you ever have any surprise donations?… Read More
Ask the director, how well did you embrace the role of development?… Read More