Not really. The keepers, it was a very different group of keepers because when I started, in order to be hired as a keeper at the Milwaukee County Zoo, you had to live within Milwaukee County. So most of them had no animal experience at all. I mean, they just,… Read More
And if so, how did you do that?… Read More
All union?… Read More
So did the older staff accept you as their boss?… Read More
Yeah, there was a, that’s a, yes, the county sup, they were all unionized. So. But the federal keepers were unionized too. There was a federal union. Read More
And so that was a big learning curve (chuckles) on how to schedule and make sure that every area was covered. They had keepers who worked different units and then keepers who were known as rovers who went in between all the units. Read More
Hmm, God, I don’t know. A lot of ’em. Let’s see, probably 30, 40 people. Read More
What number of staff did you now manage approximately?… Read More
And what were your new responsibilities?… Read More
Different from the National Zoo?… Read More
Yes, because at that point, they had a curator of birds and a curator of reptiles. And then the, so I basically had all the mammals at that point. And I scheduled all the keepers, and this is before computers, so that was, you know, sitting there with pieces of… Read More
Ken Kawata was the general curator at the time. And Dr. Boese, Gil Boese was the director, but he was in China at that time, so I didn’t meet Boese until six months after I started. Read More
I can’t remember who the third one was who interviewed me. It was a very strange process ’cause you went to the interview. All the three, there were three finalists there. We all interviewed the same day. They offered me the job that day and I had to say yes… Read More
Who was the third?… Read More
I was interviewed by Bruce Beehler, who was the assistant director, Ken Kawata was the general curator. I don’t think he was part of the process. Dennis Merritt was there from Lincoln Park at that point, Milwaukee, when they hired curators. They were just developing their first set of curators. Read More
So through the professional organization, you knew there was a job available as a?… Read More
It was a job as assistant general curator. So I had got the job as assistant general curator. Read More
What was the process? Who’d you have to talk to?… Read More
But how did you decide that Milwaukee, they had an opening?… Read More
We had a new director who came from STRI. And I knew I was going to have to go to China with him and I’d had some difficulty with him and personnel matters before. And I didn’t wanna go to China with this man. And so that was another reason… Read More