Okay. And I said, I’ll give myself a year to find another zoo. You know, and if I don’t find another zoo in that year, I will find another job in South Bend, Indiana in my hometown. And I had other job offers and I did different things. I tore… Read More
And the mayor got his nose out of Ben, got outta shape. The mayor wasn’t able to raise funds for his pet projects. But the zoo was raising money for zoo projects. Okay. When you work at a city zoo, the mayor’s your ultimate boss. Oh. But I was young… Read More
It was. And, and then you go to another zoo, which we’ll discuss, but why your stadium director’s brief. Why?… Read More
I said, you damn right. I want it. So I got the gig, boy was I stepped into it. So you stay as zoo director Yeah. For approximately one year. Yep. Which seems like a short time. Read More
Because I was a cocky smart mouth independent guy who wasn’t gonna be told no, I, I loved the zoo and I was gonna do everything I could for the zoo. And I worked really, really hard for the zoo. And I developed lots of relationships in the community. Media… Read More
I was really young too. I was born in 57. Do the math on that one. Well, the zoo director was moved aside. He, they weren’t happy with him for some reason. And I was offered the, the position and damn right, I’m gonna take that job. I, I wanted… Read More
I want to do it right. I want to help the animals out. I want to affect good change. And so, by God and Gloria, I was gonna become a zoo director. Read More
So the parks director, the parks superintendent, who the zoo director answered to said, you want it?… Read More
How does this happen?… Read More
So, because Keep in mind, it was hard to communicate back then. I mean, it was all letter writing. I couldn’t make telephone call to New Zealand. Okay. Or to Mauritius. There probably wasn’t even a telephone in Mauritius. Okay. So it, that was 1983. Now in 1984, you become… Read More
And I go to the Jersey, Wally Preservation Trust and go, this isn’t a fancy zoo. They’ve got spectacle bears, which are now called Andy and Andy and Bears. They had Rodriguez Fruit bats, which many years later I sent our curator from when I was a director at the… Read More
And it was just, I learned to listen very careful because of all the accents around the table during dinner and breakfast and things like that. It was just a phenomenal opening of the world to me about all these people from around the world. It’s a phenomenal world and… Read More
Boy, it opened the world to me. It, it, it, it told me so much that there were people like me around the world committed to making it happen. I mean, you gotta remember that, like I said, this was 1983. There was no internet. There was, you know, there’s… Read More
What value would you say your school in New Jersey gave you?… Read More
Was it important and why?… Read More
What feeling? Oh, Well, what value would you say this professional growth gave you and why was it important and to your professional growth?… Read More
There were a couple. There was a lady who had a private collection of cheetahs and was breeding cheetahs up, up in Northwest United States. A couple other students from the United States. A young man who was like 18, who was heading off to college and became a professor… Read More
But there were, there were United States people. Yeah. Read More
So, yeah. Or was he Canadian?… Read More
Gerald Durrell was, he was God. Okay. And I, and this was his zoo. He wasn’t there at the time, sadly. But I got to go to the famous Jersey Wildlife Reservation Trust and learn and meet people from around the world, from Denmark and Mexico, Mauritius. There was an… Read More