And my name was on top just ’cause I scored high. So Mr. McFetridge who originally had gotten me the job through my cousin, he sees my name and he’s circles my name and he sends it back to my cousin and says, most politicians will, I think it’s great,… Read More
So what were your responsibilities?… Read More
Well, it was different. They farmed me out to everywhere. I worked in the nursery. I was in charge of the nursery or you know, temporarily. I was worked at the bird house. I worked the reptile house. I worked the primate house with the great apes and that was… Read More
(interviewer laughing) Now, when I would go out and I’d talk to friends or something, like I’d take them on a tour. You know, friends would come, I’d say, “Hey, you wanna see the marmosets? I got the keys for that.” That was about it. And I’d go, we’d go… Read More
Can you talk about that?… Read More
Well, the zoo at the time, Lincoln Park had what they called a lot of animal keepers. Some were civil service, but many of them were TAs, temporary appointees. And they liked having temporary appointees ’cause Lincoln Park was somewhat political, Chicago Park District. And they liked having part-time TAs. Read More
I got my shot, but that followed me throughout my whole college career. Whenever I had an issue and I had to go to the health service, they would go, “All right, now you were (blabber) you were bitten by a gorilla.” So it was the unique part of the… Read More
Can you tell me about that?… Read More
Well, I was working toward my master’s degree and so I was going to school at night to get my master’s degree. But I needed to work and they had a part-time position, taking care of the marmoset colony, and Lincoln Park had a large common marmoset colony that at… Read More
So when we would get a volunteer, who was a good looking volunteer, a woman who would come in to volunteer, ’cause we had volunteers, they would always pleasantly say, “Well now, you have to clean this cage.” And they were willing to do it. “Now, you take these rubber… Read More
I don’t wanna get to a far ahead of myself, but life is a bell curve. You get 50 employees, some are gonna be excellent, some are gonna be bad, but most fall in the middle. You get seven employees, some are gonna be good, some are gonna be bad,… Read More
Didn’t have to have anybody tell you, “You’re gonna do this. You’re gonna do that.” You knew when your lunch hour was, and it wasn’t a factory thing. I mean, you just knew what your job responsibilities were for the day. And that was an important lesson of managing people… Read More
I had to go back to the university of Southern Illinois, but I’d worked till the very last day because I loved it so much. And well, I was bitten. I knew the next day I’d be at school. So I’ll get my tetanus shot at school, so forth. So… Read More
So I didn’t have much to do with the, Gene Hartz, the assistant. Gene Hartz would collect the money. I’d bring the money to him from the wishing well, but we never really had much to do with the higher ups. Yeah. Yeah. Understood. So you mentioned several names. Read More
I was gonna ask if there’s any staff at the Children’s Zoo who helped school you?… Read More
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