I think, again, it’s… I think staff is very aware if you’re not out there doing something. You know, they would often complain about oh, you know, the parks people don’t know what we have to do. You never see the director of parks over here walking through or doing… Read More
‘Cause people are busy, you know?… Read More
And did you make rounds of the zoo?… Read More
Oh, we would have, yeah. Every morning we’d have a meeting. With staff, all of staff, just before we got out. Actually they would come in, everybody had to do a walkthrough first of their areas, come back, have a meeting so everybody knew what was going on or what… Read More
Was that important to you?… Read More
But it was good. Even bad press can be good press. So yes, sometimes you still did it. You still had to give breaks to the people at the front desk or the concessions or whatever. So yes, part of my job was still to have to go around and… Read More
How big was Glen Oak Zoo in acreage?… Read More
Seven acres. Back in the day. Read More
No. Well only if somebody didn’t show up. And then you would have to fill in I mean. And that was hard too ’cause you’d get out of the habit of stuff. I remember once I had to fill in, it was a last minute one, you know, and you… Read More
But you got in there and I forgot the marmoset, I had a different hair color than the normal keeper that was there and they just did not like me coming in. And that one, one of them jumped on my head and I started bleeding and, you know, they’re. Read More
You know, Jan Schweitzer, and I can’t remember how old I was then but I’m like do you really have to put all that in there?… Read More
So it was challenging and you try to make it the best you can and use your resources where you can. Read More
How important do you think are, or how involved were you with the day-to-day activities and hands-on when you became director?… Read More
Were you still cleaning cages?… Read More
How important was professional growth for your staff?… Read More
Well I believe in it a lot because, again, the people make all the difference. You can read the newsletter. We tried, we would pay for, if budgets allowed, we would pay for their memberships so that they were trying to get more involved in things. We encouraged the keepers… Read More
The problem, again, was when you got a small zoo you can only let so many people go or who’s gonna run the zoo?… Read More
Was the zoo accredited with the AZA when you became director?… Read More
It was just accredited. I was curator at the time. So. I think that was ’81, 1981. So that was the process, you know, of going through that whole – an accreditation process is pretty intense. And worrisome and, you know, you want to pull your hair out, but it… Read More
And you mentioned you went to conferences. Read More