I think that when we started looking at those four purposes of a zoo, we obviously in 1985, we needed to find every way we could to try to generate funding against an economy which wasn’t going to support it very well. I know as I went through the profession,… Read More
What role did you see Oklahoma City playing in that?… Read More
How important is conservation?… Read More
And did you have to then find the money to build the Great Escape?… Read More
No because the sales tax took care of it, the sales tax funded the exhibit and that’s where the money came. And that’s where the monies came for all of the exhibits after that. We did have some private donations that helped but they were largely funded by the monies… Read More
Actually that term, “Great Escape,” had been there. The prior director had wanted to build a Great Escape but he’d wanted to do it totally different than what it ended up. He wanted to use the sides of a building as a backdrop and it wasn’t going to work that… Read More
So, the bonding company had to take over getting this project done. Well, needless to say because of the oil boom, the people who had money, who made pledges didn’t have money anymore. So, they lost, I don’t know, 2 or $3 million in pledges. So, here we were, we… Read More
So, this great ape area was the first that you put together?… Read More
So, we eliminated two bad buildings with one new state of the art facility. And that’s what we started doing. We started going, okay, it takes care of that. Now, we gotta do something about cats. And then we did a new cat exhibit, state of the art cat exhibit. Read More
So, we eliminated that. So, we really needed to go take care of the things that needed to be taken care of first before we built anything really new. Read More
No, it was actually replacing those exhibits at that zoo that needed to be replaced. Either shut ’em down and move out that part of the collection or build something new and move the collection into it, take that space and build something else, which is exactly what we did. Read More
Was there one in your mind that you said, “Okay, my first one that I’m gonna build.” Well. Read More
Bateleur eagles?… Read More
And when you came in, what was a animal exhibit that you thought would be important to develop as you went forward?… Read More
In those days, I think a library was very important because a lot of what we had then wasn’t on the internet. There was no internet, basically. And as a result, hard copy books and reference material was there for use by the docents or by use by staff, curators… Read More
Skins, bones, skulls and all that. And that worked out very well. So, the question about the library, in today’s world with as much material as available on the internet, probably the need for a library may not be as great as it once was because I think you have… Read More
How important do you feel a library is to a zoological park?… Read More
At least the Education Department was beginning to be a player with the other zoo community, the other zoo related institutions. Where before that, there hadn’t been any exchange between the Oklahoma City Zoo educators and the rest of the world. So, then the Oklahoma City Zoo started participating in… Read More
What plans did you develop to try and make that mission statement happen?… Read More
Well, let’s say in terms of education, we built a new education center in time and with the library and with classrooms and the lecture hall. And so, we put together a location for this to take place. We also put in a staff of naturalists to teach these classes… Read More