You know, Texas is unique. There’s nothing like Texas and thank God for that, I love it down there. But what I love about it is the people, they’re so honest and easy to get along with if they like you and you don’t try to make them something that… Read More
And when he heard that I was gonna move to San Antonio, he said, “Boy, I don’t think you and Phyllis are gonna like raising your kids there.” I said, “Why?… Read More
It seems like a great opportunity.” He said, “They’re different. You need to worry about the racial differences, you know?” And so when we went there to visit San Antonio, I thought about that. And Phyllis said to me, “But maybe we oughta go talk to the priest, the Catholic… Read More
I had the tilapia in the water. I had the hippos in one part, but I also had South American animals in another part sitting along the river. So I decided what I needed to do was if I want people to walk through that exhibit, I needed to put… Read More
What kind of cultural differences did you see from your experiences on these other places that you might have noticed in Texas?… Read More
Because of our trips to Africa, especially to Africa, my first effort, and because I was talking with those slides that I did in Africa to get funding and support from various organizations, I thought the first thing should be an African plains exhibit, but I didn’t just want an… Read More
And along that exhibit will be other exhibits that help it be a mixed feeling of being in Africa, starting with the African plains.” I was going to put giraffes in the background on a raised level. And that would be the backdrop along the 60 foot cliff of rock. Read More
That by the way, had already put together these people. For example, I had some excellent people who are craftsmen. They could make artificial wood out of concrete, you know, and beautiful. They had special dyes that they developed in Mexico that looked like tree bark. So I said to… Read More
But it wasn’t long and again, I went back to my old friends, McFadzean and Everly, and those architects and planners that were quite good. They were always good. They knew what I wanted and how I wanted it done. And it worked to my advantage and I stayed with… Read More
So the board was supportive of the master plan and paying for it?… Read More
Yes, they were paying for it and it wasn’t until the last couple years of my tenure that things got tight, not only at the zoo, but everywhere. In the mid ’90s, early ’90s, money was pretty tight in all communities. And so it sort of slacked off. And that’s… Read More
What was the first thing of the master plan after the infrastructure of the hay storage and food storage and so forth from an exhibitry standpoint that you wanted to get done and that you started and accomplished?… Read More
Now, did you start a master plan at that zoo right away or did it kind of percolate a little before you wanted to get to that level?… Read More
I didn’t start the planning until I had finished the first major project was to have placed the store the food stuffs for the animals in large quantities, where I could buy in large quantities instead of going to the market every week at the wholesale market and buying a… Read More
So I had to get some of that accomplished before I could really think in terms of what do we do with the exhibit spaces?… Read More
And everybody who ever asked me, where do you live?… Read More
I’d say, wow, I live right next door to the dog pound. But the children, they loved it. They had all this area to walk in in the evening as well. They had already gotten used to the kind of life that the zoo directors kids have to get used… Read More
And of course, all of their friends thought, boy, this is great, you live in the zoo. And you’re right. That doesn’t really happen very often now in zoos in the United States. Now you mentioned you ultimately moved out of the house because you needed more of. I didn’t… Read More
Five children. Five children. Read More
How did they react to living, the kids, on the zoo grounds?… Read More