Isn’t it gonna be built in the zoo?” “Yes.” “Well, but that’s city property.” “Yes.” “Well, when we take a mortgage, we own the the land.” I said, “Well, we can work that out, I’m sure. I’ll get co-signers.” I didn’t have any co-signers. But I said, “How many co-signers… Read More
And probably good, because I was probably crazy on, you know, what the hell’s Curtis doing now money-wise?… Read More
He said, “Well, where’s the building gonna be built?… Read More
He said, “My bank is just a pissant bank. Go down there and borrow the money, against you get some sort of a feasibility study, based on the aquarium. Hell, they give, they loan money every day to businesses. This is a business. Okay. So I went down to the… Read More
The cost of that building was estimated at about $120,000. We could build things there. We knew contractors and all that. We really got two or $3 for every dollar we spent. And we didn’t have the money to build a herpetarium. We’d spent it on gorillas and the gorilla… Read More
At that time, Amon Carter had died. His son was on my board, but he was not like his father. I mean, he was just, he was very interested in the zoo, but he didn’t really understand what he needed to do. Kirk Johnson was dead. I got a deal,… Read More
Well, where are we gonna get it?… Read More
Why was that high on my list?… Read More
Oh yeah, why did we build a herpetarium?… Read More
Number one, we didn’t have a reptile exhibit. We needed one. If we’re gonna show animals, reptiles, well, I don’t have to tell you this. We got vertebrate animals, birds, reptiles, and fishes and mammals. And so a major, a major taxon was missing from the zoo. Number two, though,… Read More
My interest in this, it was a herpetarium, by the way. You have to call it by it’s correct name. I made that name up, by the way. Obviously, I wanted a large reptile exhibit for my own interest. Also though, when we built this aquarium, Mark, we charged admission… Read More
We made a deal with the park department, ’cause they were over the zoo, that any money that we earned at the zoo stayed at the zoo. It didn’t have to go to the city hall. Someone told me to do that, and I think it was Robert Bean, I’m… Read More
He and Roger hated each other. But anyway, that’s kind of the territory. The idea that… I’m sorry, I’ve gotten off on these tangents. Talking about the aquarium. Read More
What was the process?… Read More
Why was it important to build it, because of your interest?… Read More
Oh, yes! I always, that was, that’s the big disappointment, though, in my zoo career. I did a lot to try to get research going. I could get somebody to come in, you know, zoologists, professors usually, and send students down. We even got, when I was at Portland, we… Read More
Was research important to you at the zoo?… Read More
It’s a biology. And if you have any sense at all, you can apply a lot of that information to the husbandry of your animal, the nutrition and to its educational value. So that’s why we gave money to that. Read More
And here was a chance to learn, really learn something about a very important animal, an animal that we had in the zoo. And we wanted to learn more. And some of that was ivory towers. Some of it was just plain, pure science. But a lot of it was… Read More
Why was that important?… Read More