And it was a very nice package, insurance, health insurance for a very long period of time afterwards, you still got a pension, you got all your sick time, all your vacation time that you’d accrued. And, and I looked at it and my daughter at the time was going… Read More
But I wasn’t seeing the community come back and support the zoo. And understandably, I mean, they, they got knocked and they had to recoup themselves, but at the end of four years, it just wasn’t happening. And the director of the zoo had left and a new director had… Read More
Well, you know, I’ll tell you, before Hurricane Andrew, we were at about 1,000,002 as far as visitors every year. By 19 96, 4 years after Andrew, we weren’t seeing half a million people. And a lot of the funding disappeared because the community had to rebuild itself. And so… Read More
And what attracted you to this position with Ogden Entertainment?… Read More
I mean, it was just too hot for the animals. We, we planted all those trees and by January one we opened up the zoo again. So it’s quite an experience To say the least. In 1996, you leave the zoo to take a job as vice president of Ogden… Read More
Why do you leave the zoo and go into the private sector and not go to another zoo?… Read More
And that was it. As far as big stuff, the aviary was gone. But within five days, Ron Johnson, who was our curator of birds, had trapped 80% of the birds back because they weren’t going anywhere. They were as much shock as we were. Half of ’em we found… Read More
They were like, oh my God, what?… Read More
I think they were as much shock as we were. And so my crew and I, we got out, got the forklifts, got our back, and we started bending fences back up. And you know, huff hoofstock, it’s flighty impalas, they’re spooky animals. Spring bucks, kudo. They stood right there… Read More
Now there’s not a lot of wind resistance at a chain link fence, but every one of ’em was laid down flat. And these holding airs, none of our hoofstock moved. They had all laid down on the ground, put their butts to the wind. And I guess because of… Read More
So if people made it to the entrance, they could get into the zoo because it was a mile drive once you were on our property to get to get to us. So we cleared that, and then he comes walking on his own. He had to end up walking… Read More
And so as things got destroyed, the only thing we were concerned about was, can we get water to the animals and are they gonna be safe?… Read More
And at our kitchen area was built with all concrete. So we knew we had food available and we’d stockpiled a bunch of foods and stuff knowing that it would be a while before we could get trucks back into us. And our, our electrician, a guy who’s on Facebook… Read More
And I’m glad I did because the wall there, hurricane covered homestead, which is where we lived, and it, it wiped our house out completely. But she was up with me at the zoo and our vet and our shoot team, and that’s where we hunkered down for the hurricane. Read More
But our administration building and the society’s administration building pretty much wiped out. The one thing we did do in designing that zoo is we had, because we’re on a big block of a lytic limestone, and our moats were dug outta limestone. But if you went down 12 feet,… Read More
We trained them so that they felt comfortable. And so I kept the shoot team at the zoo as Andrew was coming in and we kept our vet at the zoo. We were all staying in the hospital, which was a brand new building. Very secure, very well built. We… Read More
And that’s because we were on 760 acres now it was all fenced in and we had a five mile fence as well as a five mile moat that went around the property. But if animals got loose for any reason, they were in a big pine and palmetto force. Read More
So we were real concerned about that. And we began collecting as many animals as we could and securing them in what we thought were secure buildings. Hoofstock, we couldn’t do anything there. They had holding pins in the back that were chain link. And we just, it was like… Read More
And you know, so we gathered everything up that we could. Now our primates and things like the bears and the tigers, our night houses that we built were solid structures. They were all concrete and steel. They weren’t going anywhere. So those animals, all we had to do was… Read More
Did staff stay at the zoo, the whole beyond?… Read More