I liked the philosophy. And my immediate responses was the biggest thing I was given when I was there was they had a new general curator, Ken Redman, who later went on to become the assistant director and director of the Honolulu Zoo, was recently promoted up from the ranks… Read More
And some people will call them a yellow cur dog and other people will tell you it’s one of the earliest forms of domesticated dog and I don’t get involved in that argument anymore. So you have a new director. I presume he has an absolutely different management style than… Read More
How easy or difficult was it to adapt to this new environment?… Read More
You said it was a new zoo. Read More
What kind of zoo did you find that you were walking into and what were your new job responsibilities?… Read More
Well, the thing that hit me immediately was that this zoo had been master planned from the beginning and that they were following this master plan. They had already done a Farms of the World Complex, a herpetarium, the African Veldt had been done, but not the Asian part. And… Read More
And I felt like I’d seen too many people in the profession two years here, three years here and jumping around and you know, what did they have to look back that they could say they did or accomplished in that short of a time?… Read More
And I felt like at least five years, you could leave something that you could feel and be proud of. Read More
So what kind of zoo did you find?… Read More
You know, when I was in San Antonio, I was looking to make that next step. I had figured originally three moves, you know, curator, general curator, assistant director somewhere, become a director. And it felt like I had a broad exposure with this job at San Antonio because of… Read More
I’m looking around, the zoo is eight years old. All modern, all new, young staff, they’re excited. I liked what I saw and Louis had sent me up there thinking that I’d see what I’d learned. He was very good about allowing us to travel to conferences. And I got… Read More
And you know, the same thing happened at Sedgwick County Zoo. After X number of years, you start thinking you’re ready to take that next big step and started looking around. I promised both directors, I told Louis when I was hired and I told it to Ron Blakely that… Read More
And that was the basic question of why?… Read More
This whole thing about interpreting nature for the layman is the presentation was the overriding philosophy that Ron gave us. But always to be able to answer the question why. If you can’t answer the question why, something’s wrong. In fact, Ron Blakely on the first day in the job… Read More
Let’s talk about this start here. In 1979, I believe you become assistant director of the Sedgwick County Zoo until 1991, but a couple of questions. Read More
What made you decide to seek a job at another zoo?… Read More
He constantly traveled. He was also head of the membership of WAZO, so we got a lot of international travel too. At that time, it was IUDGZ, but on weekends, you know, Dallas Fort Worth and you had the Lion Country Safari. There was also a commercial aquarium operation up… Read More
At this time, would you say you’re forming a philosophy about zoo management on your own?… Read More
I learned a lot of the technical aspects and the evolving professionalism of the zoo from Louis DiSabato. The philosophy behind it I got when I went to the Sedgwick County Zoo under Ron Blakely. Read More
As a curator, as the third guy, were there lessons that you learned from your father that you kind of brought with you and used or not?… Read More