Interview 15334 – Caption Index: 239
Were you able to breed cassowaries?… Read More
Were you able to breed cassowaries?… Read More
So you were involved in a ZPA when you were director?… Read More
And this was in early days when postcards did not reveal. You did not see nude postcards and nude pictures of semi-naked ladies at the corner drug store. So he asked me with a kind of a smile and a little bit of embarrassment about pictures of Hawaiian ladies that… Read More
So he said, yeah. So he reached way down under the counter and brought these slides up of Hawaiian ladies provocatively dressed in only a graph skirt, leaning against a coconut tree, swimming, emerging from the ocean and coming out of the beach. And Bernard said, “Those are great.” I… Read More
I did, and what, I never had a day off. And my success for Jack Throp began to take a day off so people could expect him not to be there. I would never check time clock, never do a daily work report or anything as the keepers are required… Read More
Give me one example, one example of a remarkable person that sticks in your mind. Bernard Jimmy. Bernard had, in addition to editing this marvelous encyclopedia of animals, Bernard had a TV show program like Marlon Perkins, well, an animal-based television show in Germany. I’ve been told, I’ve not seen… Read More
And I didn’t ask for things that were unreasonable. I supported the keepers as much as I could, and they knew that. I didn’t have to (indistinct), and I just said, hey, we’re making this submission to increase the salaries. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, let’s do… Read More
Now, you mentioned that the zoo wasn’t really large, but did you make rounds every day?… Read More
With the technicians and with the boss, the civil service commissioners that were just people, people that the head, the chief of the civil service commission was a plantation owner that had salt water aquariums, just as I did. And we’d skin dive in the same place to catch salt… Read More
And in that way, it made me feel comfortable that the responsibility was on my shoulders, but essentially, the buck stopped there and I’m not going around anybody else but through the proper supervisory chains of command that we had established. Even though it was a small zoo, it was… Read More
And like when we began at the zoo, she had a blank slate with the only mammals that, a few monkeys and the goats. There was no real hazard factor, except the cassowaries were hazardous birds to be around, that’s for sure. But beyond that, there were no zookeepers. They… Read More
And how’s your stock doing?… Read More
But in all my years, I never gave instructions to any keeper, ever, unless he was the one person on those animal trips that we made on ships. Of those seven trips on ships, three of them, I had one supervisor keeper along. The other four, I made alone. But… Read More
Be pleasant to everybody on the staff, be perfectly happy to ask how they’re feeling and it’s a nice day, isn’t it?… Read More
I’m not gonna ask you how your staff when you were working at the zoo, but how would you describe yourself as director?… Read More
I think if I were to describe myself as a director, what I intended to achieve was to follow the priest concepts that I had learned in the Navy, which essentially is to go through the chain of command. Read More
And under where the city council was insulated from the operating, we that were operating at the park department and its various divisions. And that was the biggest frustration, is when the jurisdiction changed and we became a direct department of the mayor’s office. Read More
How would you describe yourself?… Read More
So previously, essentially we were shielded from direct politicians, and we were shielded by essentially the park department. The park board ran interference for their department, and they advocated people appointed to the park board were pro parks, and they advocated, just as hospital boards would, and school boards, for… Read More
What was the most frustrating time as director at the zoo?… Read More