I personally felt that it was, what they were doing was a worthless, totally worthless, you know, activity, as far as education is concerned. But at any rate it was part of the park district thing, and that’s what you did and fine, so we did it. And I can’t… Read More
(laughing) But, so I give kudos to him. Read More
We were talking about, does a traveling zoo have educational value and could it?… Read More
(Saul laughing) And, but how effective, you don’t have to tell any of these stories, but how effective would you say that type of program was?… Read More
I mean, you were thrown into it, and is the kind of thing- Yeah the first day I, the first day I came there, it was George Irving, who, you know, was doing the scheduling, said, “How would you like to go in the, you gotta take, take the children’s… Read More
Lincoln Park was really the first zoo that ever had reptiles. And I never was a, I never handled reptiles. And going out with me on this traveling zoo there was a caiman, which was, and the people, you know, caiman is a crocodilian, smaller than an alligator, not an… Read More
And most of the time I could say yes, with qualified yes. When you see, when I saw animals like Sinbad, the lone male gorilla in Lincoln Park, alone and living alone for his entire life, you sorta of saw it feel, you’ve failed in that regard. But it wasn’t,… Read More
When you first came to Lincoln Park Zoo, I know that you were involved in the, a lot of things were thrown at you, the Children’s Traveling Zoo. Read More
Am I doing that, how are we doing that?… Read More
Am I doing that?… Read More
It was not an easy animal to contemplate shipping him. And it was quite a deal. And we did though. They put him in a crate and flew him over there. And I’m very happy to say that he was one of the, if not the founder animal to all… Read More
During this time, how were your philosophies or your ideas about zoos evolving or changing?… Read More
Well, I don’t know. You know, the thing is, my philosophy always was that if you were gonna keep animals in captivity, you had to do the best thing you could possibly do for them. And I think that, I think every good zoo person feels this way. And I… Read More
John Aspinall from England was a guy who made his money, and he made a lot of it, in gambling in England, which was legal of course. And he like loved animals, and he established a whole series of zoos and wild animal parks throughout England. And he, it was… Read More
There was a publication called “International Zoo News” that covered all kinds of news all over the zoo world, everywhere in the world. And I saw he had advertised that he wanted an adult. He wanted a male gorilla, an adult male gorilla. And I thought, “You know, here’s a… Read More
And so I said, “Do you want me to follow through on it?” He said yes, and so I did. I contacted John Aspinall and I said, you know, I told him what we had, who we had, an adult male gorilla. He wasn’t totally and absolutely a giant full… Read More
(laughing) Well, the keeper, head keeper in the monkey house or the ape house actually went with, accompanied him to England. And he knew his animals, so that was okay. And it was a deal putting him in, getting him in a crate and sending him over there. It was… Read More
Now you indicated that a lot of things happened in the gorilla collection. You were there at a time when many babies were born, you were an acknowledged expert in the field. What was the relationship of Lincoln Park to probably the next person who had a major gorilla collection,… Read More
How did that come to be?… Read More
Oh no, no he did not micromanage the job at all. No, he let me essentially develop what I wanted to the job myself, and do the things that I could do best. And yeah, he was not a micromanager at all. Read More