Well, I think that one of the people who really taught me a lot about chimpanzees and great apes was Pat Sass. And Pat was a wonderful person. She had a fount of knowledge about the great apes. She had raised dozens of gorilla, orangutan, chimpanzees. The chimpanzees were her… Read More
“What could we see that was different that we hadn’t seen?” And we, one time, we wanted to see behind the bear line, “What was behind the bear line?” And we had to go to the zoologist who was in charge, a guy, this guy, Jim Mizaur at the time. Read More
Did you have much contact with him at that time?… Read More
No, I didn’t really. I mean, he was down there and he was pretty much a hands on guy and was doing a lot of the vet work too, aside from the temporary vet. But I didn’t have, I mean, I was just a summer helper here. I didn’t have… Read More
And then they had three zoologists. Dennis Merritt was one zoologist. He was kind of in charge of the Children’s Zoo as part of his responsibility. They didn’t call him curators at the time. Eddie Almandarz, who was the zoologist in charge of the reptile division. And a guy named… Read More
So what was your attitude about what zoos should be at that time?… Read More
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