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
Well, maybe not so much Greenville, but certainly Charleston and Charlotte. And even you could go to Atlanta four hours away by car. People went to those places on the weekends. Nobody came to Columbia from Charleston. Nobody came to Columbia from Charlotte. But we went there ’cause they had… Read More
Took a long time to recover. You know, I’m not a Civil War buff. I think it was a horrible, horrible thing that happened in this country. But you would be amazed that as recently as 10 or 15 years ago, and maybe even today if I had to be… Read More
Sure, the concepts are relevant, especially if they are still fresh, if they’re still relevant today in managing animals. But to say to a young man, “You gotta learn,” or a young woman, “You have to learn all about Heini Hediger,” I don’t know that that’s that important. Read More
In the community, with your zoo, how did you get the community to embrace the zoo?… Read More
What were your strategies?… Read More