Well first of all, I had known Moody Lentz from childhood days from bringing specimens there. And when I had pet shop, Moody did come out. He loved baby turtles and I always had exotic baby turtles which I got from Trudy Jergens. Yellow-neck and orange-neck, spine-neck turtles and even… Read More
They took him down to southern Illinois and that was written up in the New York papers where the snakes carpeted the Bluffs of southern Illinois and Raymond Ditmars went down there with the people from St. Louis and collected ’em. And pictures of some of those dens are in… Read More
All the rest of ’em were not well-educated. Some of ’em even were supervisor or head keepers only because they had years in seniority. They didn’t have any particular. That was a shock to me that they had now no interest in animals or any sense of sanitary procedures or… Read More
With the old keepers, we almost had to give up and wait ’til they left the zoo as they retired. But we became more active in interviewing the new young keepers so that we would able to screen and hire people that had better background and a professional interest in… Read More
I was gonna say how would those classes go with those older keepers?… Read More
Zoologist became curators and curators went on. We had at one time from St. Louis about 15 zoo directors around the country and I think Lincoln Park had the same reputation. That was Marlin Perkins. That was his philosophy. So when you were assistant curator, you didn’t have to clean… Read More
When you got this promotion, did you have then in mind any career path?… Read More
Well quite honestly, when I started working at the zoo, a surprise I did have is that most of the zookeepers were not interested in animals. They got the job because they were politically connected. Most of ’em had a six or eighth-grade education. They weren’t well-educated. And they were… Read More
When it was warm enough, the cage to the lion house. At that time, we had animals behind bars. They were inside durin’ the day on cold days and they had outdoor sections they went on nice days. Moody told ’em when to let ’em out and when to let… Read More
So you were the curator or we’ll say you were the education coordinator, but then you were promoted or was the title changed to assistant curator and how did that come about?… Read More
Well I was acting as education coordinator doing our teachers workshop. And Marlin came to me one day and said, “Now we’re goin’ to call you assistant curator and that does give you a little raise.” And so that was later of course because now I had a title. I… Read More
‘Cause recommendations had to be made to Marlin and then he would determine if the recommendations were good and he would in turn turn those back over to Moody Lentz to follow through across the zoo. But that gave the curators another opportunity to self-educate. It was like getting advanced… Read More
You work at the zoo. This is a job. Obviously you said, “I want this job.” It helped you out a great deal with the family. Read More
Were there things that surprised you about working at the zoo that you didn’t expect?… Read More
I can’t think of anything that I would necessarily call as a surprise. It was all a lot of eye-opening. I learned a lotta new things. There was in the very beginning we were under the city of St. Louis. And so some of the people that were hired was… Read More
Were you learnin’ anything about the media that would stand you in good stead later from either Marlin or his experiences or maybe Hattie?… Read More
Well for one thing, Marlin always said. First of all, he loved animals and he wanted everybody else to love and appreciate animals as much as he did. And he felt that the best way he could do that was to make them very familiar. So he encouraged all of… Read More
Were there things at the zoo?… Read More
Now Marlin was a pretty famous figure in St. Louis with his TV shows. Read More
Did that impact him moving around the zoo?… Read More