Interview 20028 – Caption Index: 456
And, you know, how can you not talk about a baby koala or whatever and not be warm and fuzzy?… Read More
And, you know, how can you not talk about a baby koala or whatever and not be warm and fuzzy?… Read More
So the best comment that I ever got, in the last, before our paper was… Well, we had a family-owned newspaper, and it was bought by one of the biggies, and then they sold it to McClatchy. And every time it was sold, the reporting staff got smaller and smaller. Read More
I thought I had been that way, but to have him actually tell me was pretty fun and gratifying. Read More
Talking about the zoo and getting the word out, did you have a good relationship with the press, and how did you nurture that?… Read More
I had a great relationship with the press, and that actually started with the termination of John Mehrtens. He had no relationship with the press. He was very disdainful of the press. And I don’t know, I guess just innately I knew that I needed to foster some kind of… Read More
Yes. (laughs) Wasn’t a big one but it was a surprise. The first thing I built or we built was the education center. We needed to raise… We needed to raise a million dollars. And it was tough, tough. And we raised about half a million dollars right away and… Read More
We had the plans ready to go, everything. All I needed was this last 100-150 grand. So one day, out of the clear blue sky, I get a call from an attorney. He said, “Hey, I want to let you know one of my clients passed away, and she left… Read More
And he said, “I want to thank you for naming the auditorium after her.” And I said, “Oh, it’s just wonderful.” I said, “Tell me, you know, tell me about Ms. Hawk. What did she know about the zoo?” He said, “She’d never been here.” I said, “What?” He said,… Read More
So we hit on this idea. We went to the city and said, “You send a water bill out to everybody who lives here every month. Can you put a zoo membership application?” Well, nobody’s ever asked that. We don’t know if we can do that or not. They did… Read More
So people love that zoo. They love their zoo, and they support it with memberships. We’re finally starting to get some good philanthropy in town. Still don’t have any… There are no corporate headquarters at Columbia, but we’re, and not a lot of individual wealth, but that’s starting to change… Read More
During your tenure, were there any surprise donations?… Read More
You know, if we can just get a membership application into hands. Read More
Do we hand them out at the gate?… Read More
I mean, what, how do we do that?… Read More
Nothing else, just the zoo. People were driving from Charlotte to see the zoo. There’s no zoo in Charlotte. And we really took advantage of that, and that became part of marketing for us and was an integral part in the success. We started the Riverbanks Society. So we are… Read More
And it was really interesting. We had an initial kickoff, and we signed up, I think it was 200. We sold 200 memberships. And a while later, a few weeks later, we were sitting around. Read More
How can we get more people?… Read More
Came to Columbia, where’s the zoo?… Read More
Well, they don’t have a zoo. So in spite of all of the things that I said about John Mehrtens, the zoo that he built, in the broadest sense, was a really good zoo. And then we began to expand and improve, and an interesting thing happened. People who lived… Read More
I was, am, was a native of Columbia. I was born there, I grew up there, and except for four years of college, I lived my entire working life there. Columbia is a interesting place. It is sandwiched between some really progressive cities. Charleston is two hours southeast. Charlotte is… Read More