Well, I’m not quite sure I was smart enough to have an attitude about what zoo should be at the time. I was just reveling in the fact that I was working during the summer into something I had always dreamed I would wanna do. Every day was a unique… Read More
So what were your responsibilities as a summer helper?… Read More
Well, a summer helper, you were responsible for cleaning, feeding, managing, showing the animals. We had a wishing well where people would throw dimes and pennies into the wishing well, it was very nice. And our job at the end of the day was to get all the money, put… Read More
But what about the senior staff members at that time? Did you interact with them?… Read More
Well, there was someone who was in charge of the Children’s Zoo and the names as I recollect, at the time they were called zoologists. Dr. Lester Fisher was the director of the zoo at the time when I first started as a summer person. There was a guy named… Read More
So when you came to the zoo, what was the keeper force like?… Read More
Well, the keeper force, when I first came to the zoo, the keeper force was all men and a lot of them had been war veterans of Korean War and World war II and so forth. There were only women were in the Children’s Zoo. And as I say, their… Read More
But ultimately, when I came on full-time time, not as a summer helper, I was one of the younger people. Read More
I mean, especially the city kids. Read More
Well, you know, it struck me too about the, I guess, is the renovated Children’s Zoo is the animal nursery attached to it. What purpose did that serve and who ran it?… Read More
Well, the nursery was, I guess, because of the young animals adjacent to, was part of the Children’s Zoo and it was run by an animal keeper and they had volunteers and some of these volunteers, you’d ask them, “Oh, I’ve been here 30 years, 25 years.” I mean, they… Read More
You could tell them anything you wanted to and they were there. Now, I can’t tell you they retained everything, but you definitely had their attention. But I have a distinct image in my mind right now from your book, “The Ark in Park,” which we’ll talk about in a… Read More
How cool was that?… Read More
And they had pony rides that you could, I mean, here was a city kid getting on a pony and going around, albeit in a oblong kind of circle thing, but how wondrous for a child to do that?… Read More
And it was a great hall as it was in London. So it was a very traditional, classic zoo. Okay. I’ve always been fascinated by the Children’s Zoo at Lincoln Park Zoo. Read More
What can kind of animals were there?… Read More
Well, the Children’s Zoo was essentially way more exotic than a lot of Children’s Zoo where they had primates, they had chimpanzee babies. They would have young animals there. They had, it wasn’t like a farm kind of thing where you had domestic animals. They had a lot of, I… Read More
So if you went to the Children’s Zoo, there were handlers. I was one of them, the laborers in the summer that you could, they would handle a snake. You couldn’t go to reptile house and get that experience. But in the Children’s Zoo, in theory, with the zoo leaders… Read More
So they would have, that’s how it was laid out. And Lincoln Park Zoo was, depending on how you measured it, it could be 29 acres or 30 acres. It was very small. It was locked in to this park, Lincoln Park, that on one side, the east had the… Read More
And that was the zoo that I first encountered, but you know, it wasn’t like I was so visionary to go, “Well, this is an old zoo.” It was wondrous. Well, Mark, this was the late 60s when you started. Read More