Overall to answer the question, yes, you definitely need to be a player in AZA. As to the amount you wanna be a player, that’s a personal decision as to what you want to do. I probably started getting involved with AZA after I went to St. Louis. I was… Read More
So, when it became the independent AZA or AAZPA at the time, were you involved, did you start to get involved when you were at Oklahoma City or were you involved earlier?… Read More
No. Well, I take that back. Yes I was. I think I first joined, which at that time was AAZPA 1969, ’70 and I believe it was under the NRPA at that point in time and then it split ’72, ’73, something like that. ’72, ’73, maybe a little bit… Read More
Probably so but I may have had to sell part of my soul. And I just wasn’t very good at that. And which probably not been good for me over the long run. But when I look back at it, for the 15 years that we were there, that I… Read More
Were you a member of the organization when it was part of the Parks Department or not?… Read More
Certainly there were things that I could have done better. I wish I would have been more sensitive to seeing some of this activity that was going on. I wish people would have been a little clearer about what the politics were. I felt that if it the city owned… Read More
Should I have done it better?… Read More
What’d you take away from the experience?… Read More
And that’s the way life goes, I guess. Read More
How did you feel about leaving the zoo under those circumstances?… Read More
(chuckles) At the time it was traumatic. Looking back on it, hey, it’s just the way things go. People get fired from corporations all the time. That never got to any point like that with me and it probably would’ve been fairly ugly had it happened because I think it… Read More
And it just wasn’t a scenario that would have been a benefit to the Oklahoma City Zoo. So, we had some personality conflicts. Rainbolt became eventual Chairman and it was certainly his goal to try to do that, take over this part of the zoo operations. And there were others… Read More
And there were six of them on the trust and the other three who supported me. I had a couple members of the sixth that supported me but it got to be an untenable situation so that it wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t fun and it was a rough situation. And… Read More
Well, part of the dynamic that existed there was you had the society, you had an individual who was executive director of the society who had another agenda. And I think their agenda… Well, I know their agenda was that the society ought to be involved more in the revenue… Read More
We’ll see how that one lasts for a period of time. So, it’s tough. It’s a tough management scenario, very difficult. And there are other institutions, particularly the ones that have privatized with societies taking over the management contract of them. I think you’re running into the same kinds of… Read More
Mr. Hammock and Rainbolt to name two people that changed the dynamics?… Read More
The other problem was, the other side of that double-headed monster or double-edged sword was the fact that you had six people on there that served the society. The society had a philosophy that they had this stewardship over the zoo. And as a result, although the society was not… Read More
In theory, it was a good system. In reality, it had its faults. It was a two-headed monster. Came in as a director. You were paid by the trust. Your paycheck says, “Oklahoma City Zoological Trust,” which is a political entity. The property, the buildings, everything within your eyesight on… Read More
You couldn’t build anything. You couldn’t tear anything down. There was a lot that you couldn’t do without first getting some kind of guidance through the city. If we were to build anything, we had to go through all just like anybody else would have, any other public entity would… Read More
What was your relationship with the Zoo Trust and did it change over the years?… Read More