And she put together various people at different zoos who are doing direct marketing to raise money for their zoos membership. And then the organization cared less about them, they didn’t even give them a room at the annual meetings where they could meet to discuss their own area of… Read More
I think as any organization either grows or dies, AAZPA continued to grow, we involve more and more staff people. The group finally start splitting up into subgroups, you might say the original intent of the group was animal people. And the whole idea of AAZPA was a clearing house… Read More
In other words, they started developing their own education area, their own research people, their own everything, and I felt then and believe today that it has one primary role, as I see it in the profession, and that is the service the membership. The AAZPA doesn’t exist, now got… Read More
Has the role changed from when you started this new organization till now?… Read More
And a few of the people start talking, “Perhaps it’s time that we start our own organization.” And so that evolved, and we found in Oglebay Park, West Virginia, a place that could become a home for our own little zoo association. And there were a group of us. I… Read More
And that was kind of the start of the National Zoo Association, and being a free-standing meaningful group that we started our own national conventions. And I think the next year I was able to step up to the presidency, and I think it was at our Houston conference that,… Read More
And can you tell us something about that evolution that occurred and your involvement in it?… Read More
In the early years there was the organization called the AAPA, the American Association Zoological Parks and Aquariums. But when I first was at the zoo, there was a umbrella organization of park executives. I think it was the AIPE, the American Institute of Park Executives. And they had conventions… Read More
And my job was to work with the commission to make sure that they were proud of their zoo. The AAZPA broke away from the parks board. Read More
Yes, we even had a really renowned architect, Walter Netsch, was appointed to the park board and became president for a few years. And Walter lived, excuse me, on the near north side of Chicago. And his wife was a political lady, Dawn Clark Netsch. And Walter would come to… Read More
And Jean was not an animal person, but she had empathy for the zoo and she would come around at times. So I would say that a handful of the commissioners cared and were involved a little bit in different ways with the zoo. Whereas the rest of them were… Read More
So did I know them all?… Read More
And Frank was brought on the commission, I think during McFetridge’s time, was with us for, I don’t know, 10, 15 years maybe. Was very instrumental in getting the commission to help do a few projects at the zoo that might not otherwise have been funded and done, was very… Read More
So Frank enjoyed coming to the zoo, he liked his animals. He enabled us to go to Africa and bring back some of our gorillas, the babies, the foundation stock. He was probably without a doubt the number one person on the park commission who cared the most of the… Read More
By and large the Chicago Park District Commissioners during my time there were not necessarily animal people. I mentioned at one time, Colonel Arvey was a political entity in town. Joe Gill was also a political person, Mr. McFetridge was Mr. Labor in town, he was not an animal-related person… Read More
You talked about the Park District Commissioners, were they involved in the zoo operations?… Read More
Did they help it?… Read More
So whether it was Christmas, New Year’s two feet of snow after a storm, those volunteers in their Children’s Zoo nursery were there every time they were supposed to be there. And we also, of course, had an animal keeper involved to kind of oversee and work with the volunteers… Read More
So I had a problem to work through with the volunteers, and convinced the bureaucracy that this was important for the operation, and they just had to respect our wanting to move that ahead. And so over the years we developed a solid volunteer Corps of people. I may be,… Read More
And one of the most important people early, early on in that work was Marshall Field. Marshall came to my office one day, and we sat and visited a little bit. And he said, “Les, I wanna help the Old Zoo move ahead.” And I thought, well, you know, he’s… Read More