I still love going in and feeding giraffe and meeting the giraffe one-on-one. ’cause they’re such remarkable kid. You know, when you’ve been doing zoo work for as long as I have, that’s just, I still am amazed. I don’t care what animal is, you know, feeding a penguin every… Read More
I know the capitol well, it worked really well, especially in my role as a tourism commissioner for the last 13 years. You get to know the senators, you know, I’ve been in governor’s, I’ve been in governor’s offices how many times talking to them about either foster care or,… Read More
You gotta be very, very judicious in your communications with politicians. But I was just in my senator’s office just a couple weeks ago talking and asking for this help and the support on this and being in the capital is very, very beneficial. It’s very, very beneficial because you… Read More
Do you have a favorite zoo animal?… Read More
Oh, you know, how many times have I testified before the politicians in hearing rooms and things like that?… Read More
How Did that work with the politicians?… Read More
You’re talking to an old man who doesn’t do Facebook any social media, but I know the value of it. And that’s what my successor brought into it years ago, was the connectivity that way through social media and communicating through social media. And the zoo does a very great… Read More
That’s, that’s really, really, and again, I’m an old person. Okay. And my wife is definitely a leadite. And, but I do texts, but that’s about all I do. You, you were Lincoln, the Children’s was in the state capitol. Yeah. Read More
You, you, you give them the authority to go with the responsibility. And they did that and they ran with it. And I, I think it’s, I think it’s a double-edged sword, to be honest with you. I never wanted to replace the actual experience of the zoo. I don’t… Read More
How would you say the new technology now can assist in promoting zoos, Twitter, Facebook, remote cameras to draw attention to wildlife relationships?… Read More
But they res we respected each other very much. It was a lot of work. Read More
You know, I couldn’t take a penguin into the studio, but they could come to the zoo. And then I’d go and we’d talk about the penguin footage that they had and things like that. Or the tiger footage that they had. And always bringing them up to date on… Read More
How did you nurture that?… Read More
By always being honest with them. Okay. I mean, I knew editors, news anchors, news people, radio personalities. I mean, I was, I did at least four radio interviews every week. At least two or three TV live appearances every week. Okay. So I was out there constantly connected. You… Read More
Did you have, you had good relationships with the press. Read More
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
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
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
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