Unfortunately time, a lot of people that are riding those are the people that ought to be walking. But it’s also helped obviously over the years. We have the shade now and we didn’t when I first got there. Oh, it was a hot place to walk around then in… Read More
Not only expanded the paid staff, ‘cos she could show me that adding these staff members, we’d generate this much more money to pay for it, but she saw it and knew how to use volunteers and became a greater outreach. You know, there’s no question, the public that come… Read More
And like I said, it’s so hard to judge the impact and there’s been all sorts of studies. You know, the one major study, I can still remember dealing with it. We had their attention for 45 minutes. And after that, it was family discussions or the monkeys look like… Read More
But I think the most important aspect for me, of anybody, but I know that communication and that’s being able to talk at a level with those that are your board members and donors out in the society and with passion to keep them excited and be able to work… Read More
But you know, we had a standing thing. You’re not supposed to walk past trash and things like this. You talk about people working with people. Read More
Did you have a docent program and how important was it?… Read More
Ours was… The first full-time new staff person I created as director was a volunteer coordinator. And we decided to open volunteerism up to all areas of the zoo. We had volunteers in the maintenance department. We had more volunteers in the horticulture department than any place originally ‘cos everybody… Read More
I think it’s huge. I saw the extreme in action. I was at the Berlin Zoo in 1985 and they had done at that time, this round every morning for damn near a hundred years. They met in front of the lion exhibit. There was the director, the assistant director,… Read More
And it was impressive, the detail. And I’d heard Charlie Schroeder tried to do it in San Diego and Charlie got out on the grounds every day. And I saw Louis get out on the grounds every day. That was probably an impossible situation nowadays, to be able to do… Read More
But you know, they want to see you. I learned real quickly that it wasn’t good enough to be out in the zoo grounds after hours walking around. Your employees wanted to see you see them working ‘cos it also gave them a chance occasionally to dialogue with you. I… Read More
I think the biggest thing for me was passing on what I saw and learned at other zoos. I was pretty good about giving a slideshow and then eventually a PowerPoint on these travels that I did that I would show. We called ’em Lunch and Learns and all the… Read More
Mickey, what was it?… Read More
Lubbock’s Place, or you know, it was just something to expose the staff to what other departments were doing or in my case, exposing what other zoos were doing. You mentioned rounds. Read More
How important is it for a director, for general curators or whomever, how important, especially director, is it to make rounds?… Read More
Part of it was just this elephant thing was time consuming and overwhelming ‘cos it was a double thing. It was the issue of importing the elephants and the issue of getting this elephant exhibit built in time to receive the elephants. I mean, it was a race against time… Read More
Can you expand upon that?… Read More
You know, there’s a tremendous amount out there. I mean, I had a large book collection one time maybe approaching a thousand books. I mean, it’s big, but it’s not monstrous like Michael or anything. And well, my wife could say that she’d read ’em all. I couldn’t say that,… Read More
You know, I always said that I asked three things from my staff. They be professional, and that covers a lot of things. That they have fun. And I added a third one and I got this out of Disney, and that is pay attention to detail. Disney uses the… Read More
I had pretty open discussions. And when I saw certain strengths in certain areas, I would see if I could compliment that with some extra attention. I believed in staff training and exposure, whether it be travel just to see the zoos, travel with the chances to move animals from… Read More
I looked through every annual report, everything that ever came. If anything was longer than one page or something like this, it usually went in my briefcase and I read it at home at night. You could learn what to read and what not to read, but that’s how I… Read More