Saturday, November 22, 2014

St. Louis Zoo #3


2 comments:

Jim Alexander said...

oo's first lion trainer. Big Mike didn't want his son to be a trainer and sent him to school for commercial art. Little Mike didn't care for the work in sign shops and came back to the Zoo. Mike would use his artistic talent painting the backgrounds for all the shows when they moved to their own buildings. Ben was with the show into the early 1950's and then was transfered to a regular keeper role. He was still at the Zoo into the late 1960s.

Jim Alexander said...

I'll attempt to recreate the first part.

The trainers in the early 1950s were Ben Fridrichs (we called him Fredricks) and Mike Kostial Jr. Mike Kostial Jr. was the son of Mike Sr., the Zoo's first lion trainer.