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Or how’s this species doing, are they nesting?… Read More

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Time wouldn’t allow me to do that anymore. Read More

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And did that happen to you and how’d you keep that connection, if indeed you could?… Read More

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I did miss the animals. I missed going into an incubator and turning eggs. I missed helping chicks outta shells. I missed that. That was a hands on thing. And it was something I’d done for so long that it was second nature. Brought me home, the kind of things… Read More

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I think that it was more of a strain on my available time being a director than what I had previously thought it might be but it wasn’t just animal issues anymore. When I’d go out on the grounds, I was looking at trash cans. (laughter) I was looking at… Read More

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Did you do it, do you think it’s important?… Read More

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I think it’s very important to do daily rounds. The unfortunate thing is when you get to a higher administrative level, there are other things drawing your attention away from the ability to do that. I know that I’m a morning person. And so, I’m an early riser and I’d… Read More

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And how important is it do you feel, is it for a director to make daily rounds?… Read More

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I was very hesitant to just turn ’em loose without monitoring and supervision until I knew what their skill levels were and were they going to be able to do things in time?… Read More

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When as I learned more about them, I had more faith in their abilities and pretty well let them lose but I always monitored. I would say to them, “I would rather you take a chance and try something and fail, then not to have taken the chance at all.”… Read More

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How involved were you in the day-to-day activities and hands-on when you were director?… Read More

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I probably did micromanage a little too much in the beginning because I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know what their strengths and weaknesses were. Read More

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Ron Blakely was close. He was close a neighbor. But I was always had an ability to have at least a good open conversation with him if there’s something I wanted to know. Read More

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And Ron Blakely, you remember Ron Blake?… Read More

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So, he was very helpful simply because he’d been the man on the ground at one point in time. And there were others, certainly Clayton Freiheit was a good mentor. Clayton always had a calming effect of thinking things through. There were some others as well. Bill Connolly was always… Read More

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So, he was very good. Read More

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And why did that?… Read More

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And by then I’d learn something that I didn’t have an answer for and I could ask him and he may or may not have had the answer but it was usually on a historical basis. Read More

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Why did they do this?… Read More

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When I- Okay, when I first interviewed for the Oklahoma City Zoo, Warren Thomas was at the same conference. Warren had been director of the Oklahoma City Zoo at one time and a lot of the things that the way the zoo was laid out at that time was the… Read More