Well, I got involved with Disney because our designer then after a few years quit and went to work for Disney as a designer. And they were going to develop this new African or this new wildlife area, animal kingdom area. And (indistinct) was working there, but they just wanted… Read More
Let’s see. Yeah, I was director of zoo at the time. Did you have to get permission from your bosses to do this or- Whenever we did anything outside like that, we always had to get permission from our bosses to do it. And they said yes. And how did… Read More
A guy had a garden over there. It was not very big couple acres, and he had some birds in it. And so he hired us to design it and put some like a hummingbird exhibit and a few other things in it. And we got involved in that. But… Read More
And you were director at the time?… Read More
And so we put one in the middle of this zoo and made an area where people could sit down, and visit and talk. And then we designed a zoogeographic zoo and I thought it’ll be a beautiful plans. But I guess it never got built. We got paid. So… Read More
And he said, “They don’t make any sense to me either.” So I went back to the guy and I said, look, we’ve looked over these things. They don’t make any sense. I don’t want to get into trying to improve this, ’cause I think it’d be too much work,… Read More
(indistinct) Freeport, Bahamas. After we got into the design of the zoo, we had a fellow come through that had been commissioned to design the (indistinct) zoo. And he wanted to know if we would look over the plans. Well, I sat down and looked at him and I thought,… Read More
So I went over them with our zoo designer and I said, what do you think of these?… Read More
When we were going back to design, did you have anything to do with designing other zoos?… Read More
And that kinda was the motivation for him to get out of the Miami area. And he moved over into West Florida. I think it was Sarasota area someplace, and he’s still alive. And he has looked like he was dying or dead for the past 40 years, but he’s… Read More
Bill Haast was one of the strangest people you’d ever want to meet. He had his Miami Serpentarium and he routinely had himself bitten or injected with venom to build some kind of a resistance against it. But when he looked at you, he looked right straight through you. His… Read More
He was visiting Miami and he visited the zoo I guess, because he just liked to go to zoos. I can’t remember everything that happened, ’cause that was so long ago. But he seemed to like the overall plan anyway. And just one other person just because he’s name is…… Read More
What kind of individual was he?… Read More
You had talked about people looking at your plans and even Heini Hediger, the father of zoo biology and an how did that come about?… Read More
Living in South Florida, developing this in South Florida. It seemed like the natural thing to do, ’cause we could grow the vegetation that made these exhibits look realistic, and we could develop outside exhibits, motored exhibits, relatively inexpensively. So we chose a zoogeographic theme featuring Asia and Africa first. Read More
But one main walkway. Now this walkway undulated back and forth because we put in a monorail. We knew we were gonna put in a monorail and that would have to follow a straight curve. And so we designed the walkway so that it would bulge out on one side… Read More
When we designed the new zoo, we had of course a choice of things, we could do all the big cats in one area, all the herbivores and in another area. And do it by type of animal. Or we could do strictly natural habitats and do a rainforest area… Read More
In your mind what was your approach to animal exhibits and layouts?… Read More
I felt comfortable every time. We were talking about designing the zoo, and you were telling us about it. What was your… You had this opportunity. Read More
And I fortunately did not let go of the antlers. So I landed on my back and he landed on his side. And the keeper that I picked up ran in and he helped me subdue him and carry him into the next pen. But as I was gathering up… Read More