Who stuffed the Como Park Zoo Gorilla?

I was doing some innocent family research for my genealogy blog when I stumbled upon a story about Saint Paul's Rice Street area. The area is served by the Catholic parish of St. Bernard's. It is also referred to as the North End and is the neighborhood where many of my relatives lived, worked, and where they attended Mass.

  

I have photos of my uncles in the 1940's hanging out back of the building which we came to identify as being on the corner of Geranium and Rice Street. While it looks like they just came from church, I have my doubts.  They were probably up to no good. 

My Uncles are the two on the left, I have no idea about the guy on the right

Last summer, Shan and I had been mucking about on a Sunday afternoon, trying to find the building, identifying other landmarks and taking photos.  We were aware that it was a neighborhood "in transition" and they had some gang violence and other crime issues.  But it was early afternoon on a Sunday. The trouble makers were still in bed. I never thought how naive we probably were. 

Also, not too wise, was the fact that we were driving a black Cadillac with tinted windows. The more I think of it, I would have been suspicious of us.

Diva's on the left with St. Bernards in the background

We were certain we had found the building. The bar appeared to be shut down and out of business. Diva's Overtime Lounge was the name affixed to the sign. We took some pictures and left.  No harm done. 

Since then I have been trying to put together a history of the bar, at least identify previous bar owners.  One of the names associated with the bar was Kuby's but I don't know what years it was in operation under that name.

Deb Johnson and Bill McGaughey (author)

In June of 2005, Deb Johnson bought the bar, at the time named Vanelli's, and promptly renamed it Diva's Overtime Lounge. Deb was no stranger to the bar business as her bar resume attests. The buxom, energetic young lady knew what kind of a bar she wanted and set about to redesign the bar to her liking.   She soon, however, was embroiled in a controversy with the local priest over some of the goings-on at the premises.  It had something to do with attire, some shootings, and pull-tab proceeds. Enough said for now.

 Another bar owner down the street, a Mr. Bill Schally operating Schally's Bar, was feeling political heat, aka pursuasion, and agreed to keep the pull tabs in his bar if there was an apology to Bill Schally, and if the church paid $10,000 to stuff the deceased, and presumably by then, dead gorilla named Don at the Como zoo. This story was reported by Bill McGaughey in the online publication Landlordpolitics.com  

So who was Don, why was his "stuffing" of such import,  and who was the anonymous donor who provided funds.  Did it ultimately have something to do with pull-tabs or the church?

Of all the attractions at Como Zoo, none was more popular (if you don’t count Sparky the Sea Lion) than Don the Gorilla. Don and his partner, Donna, were among the last Western Lowland gorillas to be legally removed from the African wild. They arrived in St. Paul in 1969 and immediately became huge hits with local zoo-goers.  Donna spent 22 years at Como Zoo before being shipped off to the North Carolina Zoo for breeding. Don died in 1994 of kidney failure. 

                      DON THE GORILLA

             Location                                                        

Como Park Zoo, outside primate house

Artist

Sievart, Betty

Sculpture

Bronze and stone

This bronze portrait of Don the gorilla was donated to the Como Park Zoo by Betty Sievert in 1982. Don was a popular gorilla at the zoo for many years. His statue is now a popular site for family pictures.

"After his death, the Como Zoo decided to donate Don to the Science Museum of Minnesota to be displayed as a taxidermy mount for educational purposes. A very generous private donor provided the funds to purchase a high-quality freezer in which to store Don until a taxidermist was chosen.

 Because of their delicate skin and unique, expressive features, gorillas are a challenge to taxidermists. As a result, there are very few who work with gorillas. The museum finally decided on Tim Bovard, a taxidermist who works at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. The same donor funded the taxidermy mount preparation as well as delivery of the 350-pound frozen gorilla to Los Angeles. He arrived safely after a long flight in a single-engine Cessna airplane, wrapped in a blanket of absorbent adult diapers.

Don underwent an incredible transformation at the hands of Tim Bovard. The skin was tanned; a form was cast from Don's body out of dense urethane foam; and the face, chest, and paws were cast from epoxy and painted. The tanned skin was glued to the foam form. The work, however, was far from over. The skin was in poor condition owing to bloating from IV fluid present in Don at the time of his death and hair was lost in numerous spots during the tanning. The hairs had to be re-implanted into the taxidermy form, one to four hairs at a time. Tim implanted an estimated 6,000 hairs in Don's back, chest, and head". from ScienceBuzz.org Sept. 2002  see the article here

The work was completed and Don is back in St. Paul as a permanent resident of the Minnesota Science Museum.

The new gorilla digs at the Como Park Zoo are state of the art, much improved from the times of my youth when I was making a pest of my self on the premises. My friends and I made many zoo trips on our bikes with brown bag lunch's, packed by our mothers, tucked into our saddle bags.   

"There are seven gorillas in the new exhibit and six are new to Como Zoo.  The Gorilla Forest is the largest all-mesh gorilla enclosure in North America.  It's about three times the out door space they had before, but it's actually divided into two separate exhibits, so it makes it easy for us to be able to manage the two different groups of gorillas that we have, said Allison Jungheim, a senior zookeeper at the Como Zoo. The gorilla's names are Schroeder, Alice, Nine, Dara, Jabir, Virgil and Samson.  For now, Schroeder has been placed with the three females, forming a family group and hopefully there will be baby gorillas some day.  The other three males are kept separate.  Zookeepers call them bachelors." 

I guess you can call them bachelors, but I prefer zoo director Victor Camp's observation which brings us back to the bars, or rather, taverns again.  He compares the adolescent ape problem to the 'bar male syndrome'.  "The guys in the the bar are getting along fine, playing pool or whatever, until the women arrive and their whole attitude changes. They start strutting their stuff, Camp said. When males start to act out, the best solution is to remove them from the larger group.  But because most zoos do no have multiple long-term holding areas for gorillas, they have trouble nipping conflicts in the bud."By Rebecca Deusser and Katherine Lutz, Globe Correspondents, 9/28/2003

Como Zoo's Gorilla Forest 

Minnesota Public Radio reports the $11 million expansion is a giant step up from a the old pit-like exhibit that a pair of gorillas once occupied.

The new primate yard is three times larger than the previous space, has real trees and grass and puts the animals on higher ground than the visitors.

You can read more about Como Zoo's Gorilla Forest here.

I want to end this blog with some amazing footage. Robin Williams and KoKo