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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

Interview 15695 – Caption Index: 366

Maybe not your mentors but you looked up to them and you learned from them and who influenced you as you were taking this turn as director of the zoo?… Read More