In 1978, Jack Hanna came to Columbus, Ohio for his dream job. Today, he is now the Director Emeritus for one of the top zoos in the country. He’s still living the dream.
“I told my parents at 11 years old – I’m going to be a zookeeper,” Hanna recalls as he sat down with 10 This Morning news anchor Angela An for his 40th-anniversary date at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Powell, Ohio.
Jack remembers how he had to convince people he knew he was making the right decision for his wife and three young daughters.
“I got calls from other guys who knew me, saying – why would you go there?” Jack says. “And I said – I am going there NOW, I’m going there because I just saw the zoo and it’s located on a piece of water up here and there aren’t a dozen zoos in this country located on a piece of water like that.”
“The potential is incredible… I know it is… I know it is.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
Cheers to Jungle Jack Hanna and his 40th “Hanna-versary.”
JUNGLE JACK’S TRAVEL BAG
As the host of three nationally televised programs (Jack Hanna’s Into the Wild, Jack Hanna’s Wild Countdown and Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures), you could say Jack Hanna is a busy man. He travels 220 days out of the year. He has a home in Montana. And he never goes anywhere without his signature hat.
SACRIFICES, SCHTICKS AND SO MUCH MORE
You could say the early days of Jack Hanna’s life as the new Columbus Zoo director was a family affair.
“I spent my first 6 months doing nothing but painting, myself, cleaning too,” he recalls. “My family, every single Sunday, the first Sunday we were here, we went to church, we’d come here, we’d pick up trash, have our picnic here, pick up trash.”
He did that with his family for several years, never once taking a day off, not even for Christmas. Looking back, Jack knows his family gave up precious memories.
“My three daughters grew up in Dublin and were cheerleaders,” Hanna said. “I only got to see them once, that’s my fault. But what they did get to do is see the Columbus Zoo… so everything is fine. It balances out.”
Jack Hanna also had to balance out the challenge of raising money for the zoo while growing the attendance numbers. So, he turned to his personal sense of humor and his famous brand of “off the cuff” ideas to generate donor support.
“Emily the chimp was here,” Jack says of one of the zoo’s first animals. “All I knew to do is get Emily to have a card and go into some of these companies here and say, ‘Hi - Merry Christmas, can I have some money for my new house at the zoo?’ Every single person - about 6 of them - every time we went to see the president, they wrote a check to Emily the chimp”
Jack says there it was hard work, but these words from his father always got him through. “Jack, love what you do,” Hanna says. “That’s why I continued. Before my dad died, he told me four words and I’ll never forget it.”
THE FIRST WILDLIGHTS
The first time Jack Hanna saw lights at the Columbus Zoo was when he hung them up himself. “I bought like 200 lights and went to the front of the zoo and hung it all over the place,” he recalls. “Oh, this is nice.”
The following year, Hanna says donors decided to put on a show in front of 200 people. He asked someone who worked in the zoo’s wood department to help string the lights together. “I had them plug it in and it blew up. Blew up the whole thing went PEW!” he chuckles while reliving that memory. “I know better than having someone work in wood to do electrical.”
HE ALMOST LOST THE JOB
Jack Hanna says he wasn’t quite sure what to expect when he first flew into Columbus for his job interview.
“About 50 miles away, we call the tower and say, ‘We want to fly Jack over the Zoo’,” says Hanna, describing his trip to Columbus from Knoxville, Tennessee.
“10 Seconds later, they say, ‘there’s no zoo here’,” he adds. Hanna says the pilot asked him if he was sure it was Columbus, Ohio where he was supposed to go and not another state where there was a city named Columbus that happened to have a zoo.
“I said, ‘no, here’s the letter they sent me,” he said.
The cab driver didn’t make Hanna feel much better, telling Jack there was no zoo in Columbus or Ohio.
“At that point, I’m so nervous and panicking,” Hanna says with a light laughter in his voice.
But what really makes Jack laugh is thinking back to the one interview question where he thought he lost the job as the new director. He was asked to describe the difference between a black rhino and a white rhino since the Columbus Zoo had no rhino exhibits. Jack knew a lot about gorillas, he says, but nothing about rhinos.
“So, I made it up,” he says. Hanna goes on to describe the quick-witted thinking he had to figure out to make him sound like he knew what he was talking about.
“There’s the white rhino, I’ve heard of them yes. The black rhino is black because he gets in the mud and the mud gets all over him,” says Jack while wriggling around mimicking how a rhino would make its skin black.
He says the interviewers were stunned.
“Mr. Hanna, the white rhino is called white because his mouth is wide, in African Dutch, white, like wide, white,” Hanna says, recalling what they said to him: “The black rhino is black rhino because the white rhino, with a big mouth, eats the grass. The black rhino has little lips. That’s how the difference is. It’s not a matter of one getting into the mud. There are two different types of species.”
Hanna says he thought to himself, ‘boy, I just lost this job’ but the people at the Columbus Zoo started laughing.
“Obviously, I didn't know the difference, I mean, I felt like the biggest jerk in the world,” he laughs.
He got the job.
ONE LAST ANIMAL
There is no doubt animal conservation has been Jack Hanna’s number one passion and priority for the past 40 years while at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.
“I have a saying,” he says with a wide grin. “Touch the heart, teach the mind.”
That has been Hanna’s motto and mission to educate people around the world about the importance of conservation. He admits his television shows have helped bridge that gap. But he says there is nothing more impactful than putting an animal face to face with a child and watching their eyes and minds transform with wonder.
“Unless you love something and see something you cannot save something,” Hanna says with passion and dedication in his voice. “People have to understand, everyone, the zoological world will save the animal world. I can prove it.”
In 2020, a new exhibit called Adventure Cove will bring seals and sea lions to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. Hanna says after that, he has one more animal on his wish list before he retires.
Pandas.
“Yes, I want them back,” Hanna says. “I’m working on it in certain ways. The thing is, it costs one million bucks a year to get the pandas here [from China]. They rent them.”
Until then, Jack Hanna says the Columbus Zoo will continue to grow and improve the current habitats for animals, with the gorillas being the next focus.
“The zoo is our family’s home, this is our home.”
SECRET TO SUCCESS
When anyone mentions the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Jack Hanna’s name isn’t far behind. But if you ask him, he’d rather his name not be mentioned. In fact, Hanna insisted networks use the Columbus Zoo name before his anytime he appeared on national television, such as the Late Show with David Letterman.
“All the times he mentioned that name if I had to pay advertising, millions of dollars I would have had to pay the network,” Jack says of the value in marketing. “I told them, ‘Do not promote me, I want the Columbus Zoo on everything.’ And sure enough, they did.”
Hanna says the true secret to the zoo’s success goes beyond the dollars and cents.
“You have to have a good team of people,” he says emphatically. “And one reason we're like this is because we have the greatest people in the zoo world. I know it for a fact. They come out here 24/7, seven days a week a lot of them. These are their family, that's how we turned the zoo around. I wasn't Jack Hanna.”
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ABOUT BIGFOOT
“You don’t know how many times I get asked about bigfoot - folks, please. I’ve been all over the world in Asia, where they say there's a bigfoot and a little bigfoot... I went up to look at animals and sure enough, saying - this guy might be feeding this to me... he doesn't live out here.”
“I’m sorry everyone if you think bigfoot is there, just forget it because I can't find it… I would like bigfoot to be there for everyone but I’m trying to help people to explain that I’ve looked everywhere, don't worry about going out of your house at night.... i think he's gone to another planet probably.”
Jack Hanna ends his Big Foot statement, with a chuckle.
THE ONE TIME JACK GOT ANGRY
As most people know, Jack Hanna’s jokes are tongue in cheek. It’s what we love about him. And what his family loves about him, probably no one more than his wife Sue. The two will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary this December.
Jack recalls the one and only time he says his wife said “no” to him.
“The only time i got upset once is when I tried to get my wife in Tennessee to breast feed a baby chimp. And I was upset yes,” he says while trying to change his smile to a serious smirk.
“She was breastfeeding my daughter and I brought the two baby chimps home from the Knoxville Zoo because their mom had walked from them and they were getting skinny an asking... and i was sitting on these steps trying to bottle feed. Sue was in the corner and that chimp wasn’t eating, so all I did was this…,” as Jack quickly shows us the puppy-dog glare he gave his wife from across the room.
His wife’s response was swift: “No way Jack.”
“I didn’t ask you yet,” Jack replied quickly back to her.
“The answer is NO,” she emphatically declared to him.
“The only time she's ever said no to me in all my 50 years of marriage in the animal world. I brought camels in kitchen, trained rats in the house, penguins in the bathtub, fish that needed, oh you wouldn’t believe what I did,” says Jack, listing the litany of animal shenanigans he’s put upon his family.