And there was only 30,000 of that left at the end of that first year. And if it hadn’t have been my first year and if it hadn’t had been with the board’s trust in the finance person, I think I could have lost my job easily. I made a… Read More
I only had to dip into the operating reserve once, which was sort of the prelude to the elephant story when it comes. But I felt very proud of the fact we put the zoo in a good financial setting. And I made a point to know where everything was… Read More
He believed in museums and zoos and cultural things for the community. And he lived up to that and he’s coming out to the zoo and right as he got to my office and we’re getting in the golf cart to ride down, ‘cos the office is outside the actual… Read More
And in fact, you’re responsible to the community because it’s their zoo. And I always said that you knew you were doing a good job when you could go home and sleep at night. When you couldn’t sleep at night, something was wrong. Read More
What surprised you from the shift in roles?… Read More
And in fact, the last thing I did my last year preparing for leaving and building that last budget was to build into the following budget after I left money for a total professional, strategic planning process and a master planning update review process. So I left my successor the… Read More
You had indicated that your father had said to you, “Hey, until you sit in the seat, don’t keep judging ‘cos it’s gonna be different.” So how different was the role as a director from that of assistant director?… Read More
You know, I tell this story. The last three weeks, I can remember that Ron wasn’t there much the last three weeks, burning up some time and everything. And I was telling somebody, I said you know, if that elephant falls in the moat, Ron will get blamed for it… Read More
He chose to do that. And they did an international, not international, they did a national search and hired a head hunter to help. And I am very appreciative. They broke it down to 20 and then narrowed the field down. We went through the essay questionnaires and the phone… Read More
The staff did not have access to the board or we knew the board at all. It was Blakely just basically handled the board himself and minimally at that. He was a very much old style of pretty much kept in the dark. And as a lot of people said,… Read More
She asked me, “What did I think the attendance was capable of being?” Well at the time, we were under 300,000. Not much, the population of the actual city itself. The metropolitan area was a little bit bigger. And I said, “This zoo ought to be drawing 650,000 people in… Read More
I went to a zoo, my first visit at any zoo, I had an expectation from something. And if it exceeded that, I looked at it as a great, super day. If it didn’t live up to what my expectations were because I knew the people or something, I was… Read More
And it always made you feel good. Now 1991, you become the director of the Sedgwick County Zoo. Read More
What happens to allow you to apply for the job of zoo director and why did you want to do it?… Read More
Again, I had promised Ron five years and actually it was at six years the first job I applied for came up, Seattle, the one that David Town got, and it was a good experience for interviewing. And I interviewed for many more, pretty competitively came in second or third… Read More
Because a lot of things that have been built cost a bloody fortune and you can’t see the animal. I can still remember Louis DiSabato draging me in to look at this picture when they did the great looking exhibits. It was in the old lion house at the Brookfield… Read More
So that was one of the things that Ron was really creative and challenged me personally in my designs when I became the director, which led to me constantly trying to learn more. One of the first things I did in my early days at Sedgwick County was take the… Read More
So your philosophy under Ron Blakely you indicated is your own personal philosophy, zoo management and managing the zoo is starting to form. Yeah, I would say that I knew when I was at Sedgwick County that we could do great things, that the biggest challenge would be that I… Read More
You know, was Ron Blakely was a brilliant man. I mean, no question this guy I’m sure would classify as a genius. And so we liked that. And it was always challenging. As he said, he had a psychology degree too so he’d brown bag psychologists at times and how… Read More
It was one of only two or three that I caught him on something. This guy was well versed in knowing his biology of the collection and animals. But admittedly, he didn’t get out in the zoo hardly at all. At the end, he had a special interest in the… Read More