In Rochester, I don’t think I even mentioned it to the county park director that I was gonna take that group. However, he probably saw it in the newspaper. But it was on my vacation time, so it didn’t really matter. I was gonna do it anyway, and it was… Read More
So were you able through the years to then bring donations to Rochester or to the zoo we’ll talk about later, San Antonio through these things?… Read More
Well, that’d be really great, but, you know, still camera too.” And next thing I knew I had a 16 millimeter turret lens camera, and a case of 16 millimeter film and a brand new Kodak, the best Kodak camera that they were making at that time and off I… Read More
So, ’67 was the first one and 1968 was not in Rochester, but in another city. Now, two questions. Read More
How did that opportunity first arise that you were able to start thinking about, I’m gonna take people on a safari?… Read More
Well, for the first thing I did was I watched how they treated the animal, how the young man who came to pick it up in the trailer and take it to the games, how they handled the situation. And I let it go for quite a while. I didn’t… Read More
Yeah, I did. I just said, we need to stop this. And we did. Read More
When you were at Rochester, did you start on safaris when you were there or was this later?… Read More
The first time I took a group on a safari was a 1967 and it was in Rochester, New York. I wanted to go over the years and never thought that would be possible, but it became something not only possible, but regular for me over the years, because the… Read More
Yes, it was started before. Read More
And how did that whole, what was the experience?… Read More
You came there, saw this, were unhappy or you were, and then how did you make those decisions?… Read More
Was there a tiger a Bengal tiger called Spirit that you dealt with?… Read More
I believe, I didn’t know the name of it, but Rochester, they had a tiger that the ball team would take out every weekend in a circus cage. And I soon stopped that. They were not very happy when I did that. Read More
Was that something that was started before you had arrived at the zoo?… Read More
In order to get these animals, I was trading with other zoos. I was buying from dealers who passed through many times a year and I was very familiar with the good ones and I didn’t deal with the bad ones. So it was not difficult to make these adjustments,… Read More
How did you know a dealer was bad or a dealer was good?… Read More
By that I guess I’m thinking, to mean they delivered what they said they would, or they didn’t deliver what they said they would, or what differentiated in your opinion, the bad dealer from a good dealer?… Read More
Well, it doesn’t take long for zoo people to get the word around when something didn’t go right, or animals sold to a dealer and he sold it to someone who couldn’t or shouldn’t have had that animal. It doesn’t take long. In addition to that, I knew these people… Read More
Now, when you were purchasing these animals and bringing them in and kind of changing the face of the collection, was this, for your zoo are other zoos, was this something where you would purchase them from animal dealers who had these animals available?… Read More