When I became director I was absolutely delighted at the support I received immediately from other staff members of the society. Of course I was not director of the whole society, I was director only of the Bronx Zoo and that was plenty. We’re gonna speak a little more about… Read More
Quick question, during this time, did other zoos, or did you reach out to other zoos to advice on labor relations or were you all by yourself with the help of these experts you have?… Read More
Back in 1961 when the Bronx Zoo and all of its facilities were subjected to this AFSCME strike, there was no place to turn, we were by ourselves. There were other institutions in the city of New York who watched with bated breath because most of them had the same… Read More
The keepers by in large stood by their animals, but the maintenance people did not. The clerical people more or less maintained their positions, the curators, many clerical people came in regularly and cared for the animals when the keepers could not because the keepers had to go and be… Read More
The AFSCME, struck the Bronx Zoo in the spring of 1961 and the strike lasted seven weeks. It was a horrible time. I’d been curator. John Tee-Van, the general director of the society in those days had worked very, very hard to avoid a strike, but there’d been a serious… Read More
And of course I was very well qualified to do so, I could catch a cotton mouth or a rattlesnake bare handed and teach a hummingbird to feed a substitute diet and put a harness on a splay leg of giraffe. But, he had made his choice and I was… Read More
How did it affect the running of the organization?… Read More
The aquarium had a large and important genetics program under Dr. Klaus Kallman and a major Marine, pharmacology program, a marine biology program under doctors, Ross Nigrelli and, George Ruggieri. So the aquarium and the zoo were very close and the staffs completely interwoven. And that situation was working well… Read More
What were the strikes all about?… Read More
Did it change during the 1950s, the 1960s, was there a different culture?… Read More
What was your recollections?… Read More
When I came to the Bronx Zoo in 1956, a new aquarium was under construction at Coney Island. The society’s long-term aquarium, which had been down in the battery, which the society operated from 19 two until really about 1940, had been long closed. So the society had been induced,… Read More
We were gonna talk about that and we’ll hold that for later because we have we’ll cover that. Let’s talk a little about the early years, a little before 1962, shortly after you started working for the zoo society, they reopened the New York aquarium on Coney Island. Read More
What was the relationship of the aquarium and the zoo at that time?… Read More
He was a tall, athletic man, very, very interested in wildlife, a naturalist, but a businessman. He was a graduate of Princeton and then to work on his education, he worked in the railroad yards in San Francisco. He learned somewhere to sing cowboy songs, which he did on the… Read More
Although the person who really got it started was its first director, William T. Hornaday who started here in the 1890s and Hornaday, of course, was responsible for the first seal preservation. He led the effort to stop the plume trade and he led the effort to preserve the American… Read More
In 1954, I made my first real visit to the Bronx Zoo, I’d come actually at 1944 with my father to see it. He was coming into New York and I use it as an excuse as a teenager to get up here and look at the zoo. But in… Read More
What kind of person was Fairfield Osborn?… Read More
And now there were some wonderful conflicts, this not necessarily to be recorded between Bridges and Beebe and I didn’t know why. just so you know. And it took me months to discover why. It was about commas. (William laughs) Beebe liked and used a fair number of commas, Bridges… Read More
(William laughs) Well, speaking of that, had you met Fairfield Osborn before applying for work at the zoo and, had you met the other personnel, so when you walked in you weren’t an unknown person?… Read More