Oh, he did. The greatest story of all time was appropriations. The guy from the, I heard this indirectly, started with the director of National History Museum who took down a volcano demonstration for this wing on volcanoes or something. And he said my dad didn’t play fair. And my… Read More
And yeah, she was a very attractive lady and my dad, when he got questioned about it said, you know, it was one of those things that dad said until you run the zoo, your responsibility is to take advantage of everything you can. You don’t make your own luck. Read More
How important for the future of zoos is it to keep this link with the past?… Read More
Is it true that when he would go to the congressional hearing for the National Zoo’s budget that he would bring animals to the budget hearing?… Read More
And sometimes the keepers who accompany him were attractive young ladies?… Read More
Identify him, that was?… Read More
That was Ernest Walker who wrote “Mammals of the World.” It’s a classic printed by John Hopkins and still in, new additions coming out. But it was the start of the rebuilding the National Zoo, which started with the birdhouse in 1960. And he literally to the day he retired,… Read More
The monkey house was totally redone. The reptile house was overhauled. I mean, the whole zoo got overhauled at least once and new office and new veterinary hospital and conservation center. So he had a good run. A lot of that stuff is being redone a second time. Sometimes some… Read More
Dr. Mann and his wife Lucy lived for a long, long time and she was part of the family. No zoo likes to have tragedies occur. And the tragedy occurred I think when your father was director of a child killed by a lion. Read More
How did that, if you know, how did that affect him?… Read More
Oh, hugely. Can you kind of give a little– Yeah, what happened was a girl got on the other side of the guardrail and the lion reached out of the cage and swiped and decapitated her on a Sunday afternoon I think it was. And not a pretty sight. I… Read More
Washington was segregated almost still at that time, just breaking away. And grandparents, these were the grandparents with little daughters. So there’s all those little things that were involved in it. But I can still remember the absence of my father there for a couple months and the stress he… Read More
I saw him just about every Saturday when I was five, six, seven years old. ‘Cos after we’d do the rounds and I’d go to the zoo and go around with him and Ralph Norris, who was the head keeper. Read More
And that was also necropsy day so after we’d do the rounds of the zoo, we’d do necropsies and I’d ask all week, what died that day?… Read More
‘Cos I was fascinated by necropsies and I learned years later, my dad used to cringe ‘cos he’s trying to save animals and I want to know what died so I can see what’s cut up that weekend. But afterwards, the last thing we’d do, Dr. Mann lived in an… Read More
I didn’t realize the time, but this was the impious for me doing the travel and seeing what I saw. I’ve never taken any paid consulting, but I’ve done a lot of consulting as far as giving my opinions and impressions and telling them hey, by the way, you need… Read More
But there’s no question it’s a thing. And you know, more and more people, a lot of people have gotten out of elephants or will temporarily, but there’s gonna be a lot of empty elephant exhibits the next few years before it starts going the other way. You mentioned your… Read More
Did you ever have the opportunity to meet Dr. Mann?… Read More
They did. They actually, early on in the reptile thing, they got some work with Cuban crocodiles and actually had Cuban crocodiles at the zoo. Man, they’re nasty ones. They’ve got a personality and watching them and so forth. And you know, I don’t know where that went or what… Read More
Did your father ever speak about the good or bad about being forced or asked to take political gifts?… Read More