But the bird house was the centerpiece. It was an icon. It was huge. It was 30,000 square feet. And to this day, again, everything in that original zoo was built in an oriental motif and was painted red and black, from the administration building to the snack bars to… Read More
But this bird house that was touted as maybe the best bird house ever built and touted by Mehrtens that way, and a lot of people felt that way ’cause they had an incredible collection, he had it built out of wood, and it started to rot before the zoo… Read More
I had a PR director. I had, and I’m using titles that were used back then. I had a, finally we had a guest relations manager. It just, things just started to change. The zoo’s attendance went from about 450,000 to 900,000 in a year and stayed there. We hired… Read More
And my whole life sort of changed. I became more… I guess I just was more at peace. I had two children by then. They became more of a focus in my life. And I think I became a pretty good manager. And I’d like to think that my staff… Read More
I don’t know what else to say. I just, it was like half of my career was this not very nice guy, and the second half of my career, I think I was pretty good at what I did. Can you tell me about the- You talked about you’re building… Read More
And how would your staff describe your management style?… Read More
Great question. So the first few years, I was a terrible manager. I guess I’d been director… Well, while I was still let’s just say a not very good manager, (laughs) I managed to get a bond issue passed and double the size of the zoo. And the zoo went… Read More
And one day I just said, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t, this is not good for me. It’s not good for the zoo.” And almost overnight, which is probably more like a year or so, I changed, and I completely changed. I began to… I gave the staff… Read More
They elected three directors, and I got the fourth number of votes. And I don’t remember to this day, but one of the three who was elected ahead of me left the profession soon after, and they moved me up to the board. So I had my fir- I actually… Read More
Can you describe your management style?… Read More
Did it change?… Read More
And at some point along that way, again, we’re still in the maybe 1980-’81-’82, I’m not sure, every year and still to this day, the AZBA, A, (laughs) AAZPA, now AZA, the incoming chair puts out a call for service if you would like to volunteer. And I sent a… Read More
So I got to talk on the phone to all these people who were budding directors, budding curators. I got to talk to their staff, not their staff, but to their supervisors. And just, I was networking. I was just, I guess that’s the word I would use. I was…… Read More
And that was another significant moment in my career, because now you… And I think accreditation at the time that I served, yeah, in fact, I know it was. The first term or two years, whatever, accreditation was voluntary, I became chairman of the accreditation commission the year that the… Read More
What happens now?… Read More
So I can’t say… I can’t honestly say that at that still early point in my life and career, I had formed a lot of opinions about zoos. I knew I didn’t want to deal with animal dealers. I had been burned too many times. So I started pulling back… Read More
He was the president or director of the Pittsburgh Zoo Society. And he taught a class on, his class was on revenue. And we had a class where we learned that you had to pop popcorn all day so that people smelled it and would buy more, and you had… Read More
I think he was actually an attorney talking about human resources, and I soaked that in like a sponge. That guy was, he was fabulous. But now I knew some directors and people that I would call on the phone and just shoot the breeze with, which was kind of… Read More
My best friend in high school had died of a cocaine overdose, and I wanted, decided I was gonna be a DEA agent. So I’d gone to the post office and was in the process of filling out an application to work for the DEA when they fired Mehrtens. You… Read More
Well, let me back up. So I became director in the fall of ’76, which was the first year that the AAZPA had a management school in Wheeling, West Virginia. And the management school, the philosophy behind the establishment of the AAZPA Management School was to teach business skills to… Read More