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
I was treated marvelously by the older colleagues and sometimes very instructively. William Bridges, the famous curator publications at the New York Zoological Society as the Wildlife Conservation Society was called in those days, was one of the first people to see me. And he came in, shook my hand… Read More
Lee Crandall was an extraordinary fountain of information. And although the zoo was in poor condition, that could not be laid at their door and it took a while to change and we’re still changing it. The people who have succeeded me are still working to change it and make… Read More
Marvelously?… Read More
That the area around the zoo was not in good condition. The Bronx had become one of the poorest areas of that size in all the United States. So I saw that there were a great many challenges beyond the immediate needs of the zoo. The bird collection in St. Read More
How were you treated by the older colleagues to this young man who was coming in through the door?… Read More
And I presume it was the Bronx Zoo that you were walking through the doors. Read More
What was your first impression?… Read More