Yeah, I was the conduit literally for almost everything. I mean, Saul was very involved and in terms of going to Australia for the koalas, and he went to China for the pandas. But once you eliminate those two species that you work with during my time, in that period… Read More
Some of the species we had, some of them we had to acquire, one of them that we wound up adding for that was the François’ monkey, François’ leaf monkey, which was, we knew we were getting with our sister city relationship with Shanghai, they had offered to send us… Read More
No, Saul was real good about that. I mean, Saul would acquire animals. I would be doing, I knew the direction we were going. It’s like when we were acquiring the animals for the primate center, we wound up having to move out all the primates that were at the… Read More
Were you responsible for acquiring animals or was that the director’s job?… Read More
I mean, there was a great debate about change. There used to be giving them all out meat and bones in addition to the stuff. And that was changed while we were there. I mean in the end, they were fine, we shipped them back to China. Saul and I… Read More
Well, okay. With the pandas came a team from China, that were with the pandas. There are two keepers and interpreter, we wound up assigning two keepers, their job was take care of the pandas. And that’s all it was. I mean, part of their job too, was they were… Read More
Were you concerned about their wellbeing?… Read More
Were there special things you had to put into place?… Read More
How did it affect you as a manager of the pandas?… Read More
The society actually made so much money from the pandas that they wound up giving extra money to like $100,000 extra to the Chinese government because they had it, you know, I mean they were doing so well. It certainly was a special time for the zoo. And like I… Read More
And they were allowed three minutes and then they had move on and we’d bring the next group of 60. And it was common for us to have a line with a three hour or more wait to sit for, to spend 180 seconds in front of two pandas. And… Read More
I remember that the gift shop manager was saying that she said that literally, we were making sweatshirts and stuff to sell with pandas. And she said, I remember her telling me. She said, literally every wet red sweatshirt that was available west of the Mississippi was coming to San… Read More
I mean, probably the early eighties, pandas were early eighties, when we were lucky enough to receive the pandas. And they were at LA, that was during the Olympics. China lent the pandas, a pair of pandas to the LA zoo and during the Olympics. And in those days, pandas,… Read More
The mid eighties were probably some the best times at the zoo to this day. I mean, probably there was not, we were so lucky in terms of what happened in the mid eighties, gorilla, early eighties, Gorilla World opened up, we built, we designed and built the Primate Discovery… Read More
During this time that Saul was there, were you acquiring animals?… Read More
No, simple answer. Read More
So he knew that aspect better. And it was also good because he knew the right people and his connections were better than Saul. I mean, though Saul was a department head, and in the chain of command with Phil, they were on the same level. Everyone reported that the… Read More
Did they ever approach you?… Read More
But she didn’t report to Saul, like legally, she reported to the zoological society, but they had pretty good working relationship. I mean, something can always be better, I guess. Who’s to say, as people changed, after Saul retired, then in the interim, the assistant general manager of the recreation… Read More
Well personnel change, different people, whether it be when I was at San Francisco, I think I had six directors in my tenure there. So there was always a different relationship with society. With me, with directors. It was quite fluid, when Saul was there, he had a good relationship… Read More