His newspaper was running daily things on raising money. And I think they’d raised just, you know, 10 cents here and a dollar there and all that. I think they had maybe $2,000. He calls me up and I’ve never met the man yet, but he was a fixture in… Read More
Plus a degree, masters and all. And I had a lot of publications, a lot of that I’d written, okay. Read More
Well, the… I’d been in Fort Worth maybe a week when Hittson brought the park board out to the zoo to meet me. I was very, I mean I was really… It was a 180 degree switch with what I was dealing with in Dallas, there I was as a… Read More
So what to do with all of that?… Read More
“Who’s he conning now?” As my friend Dolan said. Well, he said, “Suppose you that you can’t pay, it doesn’t work, then what happens?” And I said, “Well, we will give them the herpetarium back.” “But it’s on city property.” “Yeah, they know that, but they haven’t figured it out… Read More
the story about how the James R. Record Aquarium was built?… Read More
Sure. Oh, that was a one, that was my first real project in the zoo world. And I had come from Dallas, and I’ve told you the circumstances of Dallas and all. And here it was a new world. I wasn’t the kid next door. I was this college kid… Read More
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
And then I had an attorney on my board. Now, Snakard was on the bank’s board. My attorney was very conservative. 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
He said, “Well, where’s the building gonna be built?… Read More
Well, where are we gonna get it?… 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
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
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
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