Cars were selling for $400 delivered in Honolulu, $400 total. So this elephant for $4,000 was the equivalent of the price of a beach house on Waikiki Beach. It was a lot of money. So he used all his persuasion with both the business people, the newspapers, the school children,… Read More
And this fellow was half (indistinct), half Caucasian, and he had many ties here with the Bronx Zoo, and he brought the first koalas and the first platypus. Platypus died, I think, I believe it never got here, but the koalas did get here and not very long, here being… Read More
For that period of time, it was called a republic, because between the monarchy, when the monarchy was overthrown in ’83, the hope was by the men that overthrew the monarchy, that Hawaii would become a territory immediately, and it didn’t. That was huge amount of political intrigue. Year after… Read More
So the first zoo director essentially was not called zoo director in Honolulu. He was a politician and he happened to have been the same age as I was when he started. He was 24, he was a part Hawaiian, a very forceful, effective person named Ben Hollinger. And in… Read More
It’s on the slopes of Diamond Head Crater on White Key Beach. Essentially, it’s a diamond in the rough. When I moved there or lived, was in the Navy there, the mammals in the zoo, total mammal population was about six domestic goats and about the same number of reeses… Read More
And I’ll go back a minute more. Well, a tiny bit earlier than that. Historically, Hawaii was a actively operative monarchy, Hawaiian islands were until 1893, when then queen, Liliuokalani, was essentially disposed from her… She was urged out, forced out, and many books have been written about this, by… Read More
Oh, sure. I was not only a private citizen, I was only 24-years old, and I’d only lived in Hawaii for a matter of months. I was very green, but I had in the time I’d been there back and forth when our ship went back during the campaigns and… Read More
So this PR lady who was a friend of mine, who I had developed a relationship with her in terms of getting her interested in the idea of let’s do a zoo said, “Okay.” We basically asked her, “Okay, Lorraine, what do we do?… Read More
How do we develop, advance this idea of urging the city, the park department, the park’s board to accept these gift animals as the nucleus of a new zoo?” Now you’re doing this as a private citizen?… Read More
And so the dairy owners were very aware of the liabilities and concern, and there were gassed when they saw carloads of kids climbing out and pulling grass and weeds, and feeding it to the animals, and throwing lighted cigars in at the, now very adult, very large chimpanzees that… Read More
But that way, you, as the new owners moving to this community will look good either way that happens.” So they did offer them to the city and one of the, again, it all goes back, Mark, to people and people and people. And in this campaign, and I think… Read More
So as a consequence, he lived a life of multiple marriages, and he had this interest in zoos. He had a zoo in Santa Barbara, California, well, animal collection, at his property in Santa Barbara. And then in about ’36, he moved to Hawaii as a second home. And he… Read More
And then right in the middle of the war time in ’45, 1945, Chris Holmes committed suicide. So in his will, he had left these animals in this island and they were residing on this island in Kane’ohe Bay. He left these animals to the owner of a dairy, a… Read More
Far fetched, as that may seem at a local dairy, which is located right now on the grounds of one of the classiest hotels in Hawaii, out of town, about five miles, resided an elephant and the Bactrian camel, and two chimpanzees, adult, very large Chimpanzees. And these animals were,… Read More
And as a people were released from the Navy duties based on their appoint system and the people that were unmarried with no dependence were the ones that were retained the longest. Married folks and particularly those with kids got out sooner. So somebody had to run the ship to… Read More
So I mustered through a human person-to-person contact developed kind of a base core group. We didn’t ever organize ourselves as a zoo society or zoo supporters or anything. We just set up, they were friends of friends, that we’d meet for dinner or picnics on the beach. And I… Read More
We wanna live in Hawaii. I wanna get out of the Navy in Hawaii. As I worked toward rebuilding, there was a zoo here in Hawaii many years ago, it’s essentially withered away even before the war. I’d like to have it, to help rebuild it and to be in… Read More
Always tell the truth, never promise them anything that you can’t deliver, and be friends and always keep your word.” And, okay. My biggest, probably biggest ally, Mark, biggest group of allies were the media people. That was, of course, pre-TV, TV came into Hawaii in the 50s, early 50s. Read More
Okay, the way it came about, when I first came to Hawaii in the Navy, I went around Diamond Head in a Navy troop ship or a Navy, going to be assigned as a landing craft officer on on a ship that carried both the troops and the landing craft. Read More
So when- Before you start, I wanna just get a couple of things here. You said Belle Benchley you had kind of a mentor, she was kind of a mentor to you. She was my most important mentor. Read More