Interview 15695 – Caption Index: 374
Ron Blakely was close. He was close a neighbor. But I was always had an ability to have at least a good open conversation with him if there’s something I wanted to know. Read More
Ron Blakely was close. He was close a neighbor. But I was always had an ability to have at least a good open conversation with him if there’s something I wanted to know. Read More
And Ron Blakely, you remember Ron Blake?… Read More
So, he was very helpful simply because he’d been the man on the ground at one point in time. And there were others, certainly Clayton Freiheit was a good mentor. Clayton always had a calming effect of thinking things through. There were some others as well. Bill Connolly was always… Read More
So, he was very good. Read More
And why did that?… Read More
And by then I’d learn something that I didn’t have an answer for and I could ask him and he may or may not have had the answer but it was usually on a historical basis. Read More
Why did they do this?… Read More
When I- Okay, when I first interviewed for the Oklahoma City Zoo, Warren Thomas was at the same conference. Warren had been director of the Oklahoma City Zoo at one time and a lot of the things that the way the zoo was laid out at that time was the… Read More
Maybe not your mentors but you looked up to them and you learned from them and who influenced you as you were taking this turn as director of the zoo?… Read More
Do you go to any of their meetings and stuff?” Nobody did. And I just basically said to them, “It appears you need them but they don’t need you ’cause they’re still doing their hobbies.” And I just think that AZA made a big mistake when they started cutting them… Read More
When you were active in the profession as the director of the Oklahoma City Zoo, what professionals did you really look up to?… Read More
And the reason being is that they are too worried about the X factor genetic issue. In other words, I won’t take your duck because I don’t know his genetic history. What’s happened is that many of these waterfowl collections are disappearing in zoos. They’re not going back to the… Read More
We knew their families. We knew their kids. We’d visited their homes. They’d been in our homes. They were business colleagues and they were friends. This group today doesn’t know any of ’em. They on the whole, they don’t. They don’t have any contacts with ’em and as a result,… Read More
No, they don’t about private individuals. About four years ago, there was a spring regional in Oklahoma City and the Avian Interest Group, the bird curators were meeting, had their annual or mid-annual meeting there. And they asked me if I would come and make about a half hour, 40… Read More
So, if we wanted new specimens, if I wanted new specimens of waterfowl, I never went to a zoo, I went to a private aviculturist. Pheasants, the same things ’cause that’s where you were gonna find the good specimens and reputable breeders. We all did that. So, it was not… Read More
Do you feel that zoos today feel the same way about private individuals?… Read More
We probably traded more with other zoos than animal dealers because as you know many of the mammals in captivity were probably born in captivity. If we were going to work with some exotic species of antelope or something, maybe times you might have to import them. I know but… Read More
Were you trading with other zoos primarily?… Read More
Were you working with animal dealers?… Read More
Yeah. We did, started program and been propagating and been doing well. It’s been a successful program. Now, I haven’t been there for 14 years but I assume it’s still going. Read More