I think the projects, particularly for terms of publishing were just opportune. In other words, this is something we need to work with and you worked with it. I don’t know that I really sat down and gave a lot of thought to like, I need to work, I need… Read More
It’s what you personally wanted to do or were you told to do certain things?… Read More
I would publish and Gus would publish, we’d publish about how to breed such and such or how to manage a hummingbird collection, stuff like that. That was in spare time. A lot of things were done at home at night. Read More
Were you allowed to pick the projects that you wanted to learn about or publish?… Read More
I think my workload at Philadelphia, if I try to remember back on what was a typical day, I was the one who was responsible for checking out the bird collection every morning. I tried to visit every exhibit we had. Now, the zoo had just constructed the Elmer S… Read More
Some other passerines, tropical tanagers, stuff like that. And so, my job was I had to go in the hummingbird exhibit obviously, every morning and we had individual feeders hanging. And so, this feeder was for this hummingbird, that’s his territory. And this feeder is for this humming, that’s his… Read More
Well, it sounds like you had the opportunity for a lot of unique learning experiences or were you also assigned as an assistant curator, just the basic work that no one else wanted to do or Gus didn’t want to do?… Read More
And we were writing a lot of the things that was happening. It was all new stuff, certainly reproduction with hummingbirds and reproduction with… The zoo one of the largest waterfowl collections in the world. And so, we were breeding things that hadn’t been bred before and that went not… Read More
There may have been one other, maybe Frank Todd. We were the youth at that time. So, it was a lot of pioneering was done then. Read More
Yes, definitely. The collection at the Philadelphia Zoo far surpassed that of the Kansas City Zoo, so the learning opportunity was there. It was very good. And it was just a matter of me taking advantage of that opportunity. We had birds that the Kansas City Zoo would never have… Read More
Things that I’ve probably forgotten a lot of but he always had answers very quick because he had the expedition experience. And I don’t know of any other bird curator ever in this business, who had the expedition experience that Gus Griswold had ’cause he did that for the universities,… Read More
So, the words that Roger Conant said to you about being the small frog in the big pond and growing, were you learning things about birds that you couldn’t have learned in the other zoo, now at this zoo that you were maturing?… Read More
Wow, haven’t thought about that. Gus was a very prim and proper person. In fact, if you looked at Gus, you’d thought he was an English professor. He wore the tweed jacket and everything and that’s the type of persona he projected. But I don’t know that there were really… Read More
And then he brought a camera that he’d had in Borneo, (laughs) which took lousy pictures. He just was a man of tradition. And if I was gonna think of anything funny, it was just that Gus didn’t really step up to a lot of new things very easily. And… Read More
Can you give any memorable Gus Griswold stories that he shocked and surprised you or something where it was very memorable?… Read More
Would you say there’s anybody comparable to him today?… Read More
No. No, not at all. Unfortunately or fortunately, we’ve come to a point in life we’ve outlived our mentors, we’ve outlived some of the people we really looked up to and that were there and so graciously gave of their time and knowledge. They’re all gone but I don’t see… Read More
I can’t ever remember having a conversation I didn’t learn something. And particularly, the opportunity to get out one of these big monographs and open it up and say, “Now, Gus, tell me about da, da, da, da, da.” And he could. And so, he was a very interested, interesting… Read More
And he was like a second father. He really was. And even today, I miss my conversations with Gus. Read More
Anyhow and he worked for some of the great ornithologists at that time. Tom Barber. And so, he got hands on ornithological training in taxonomy, as well as the general science of ornithology. And he had a book collection that was priceless. And in fact, after his death, his book… Read More