THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 20, 1995 TAG: 9510190169
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 16 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 131 lines
Monkeys chattered raucously just outside Major T. Benton's office while next door twin Siberian tigers happily soaked in a giant galvanized tub.
An unusual setting for an executive's quarters, but not if you are sitting in Benton's chair as the first executive director of the Virginia Zoological Society, the nonprofit support group of the Virginia Zoo.
A newly created job in an exotic setting was the perfect bait to lure Benton, 53, from his most recent home in the Florida Keys, where he managed a dolphin project for the Chicago Zoological Society.
Benton, a former college professor and a published author, also lists on his resume experience as a circus roustabout, a surveyor's assistant, a harbor master, a resort manager, a financial services account executive, a wildlife sanctuary manager, a dolphin researcher, as well as a tour of duty as a Marine rifle platoon commander in Vietnam.
``I have always been one who likes to get in on the ground floor of things,'' he said. ``I jumped around to these things that were relatively disparate wondering how they would ever come together and now everything is falling into place.''
Benton, who lives in the Great Bridge section of Chesapeake, stepped into the newly created position on June 1 and is still delighted with the possibilities of the job.
As director, Benton will oversee all the society's educational programs, fundraising, membership drives and administration. Norfolk's Department of Parks and Recreation will remain responsible for the animals and the physical plant.
Benton's trip to Norfolk to interview for the position was his first visit to the zoo in 40 years. ``It really had not changed that much except that it was cleaner and the landscaping had been greatly improved,'' he said.
The Virginia Zoological Park now occupies 12 acres - or about a quarter of its available land - on a site purchased by the city of Norfolk in 1892 from three private city residents to be developed into Lafayette City Park.
In 1900 the city began to collect animals for a small zoo exhibit that was so successful that a main zoo house was built in 1910. In 1987 the zoo received accreditation by the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums and remains the only accredited zoo in Virginia and the only accredited zoo for exotic animals between Washington, D.C., and Asheboro, N.C.
In the next few years, major changes will create a zoo far different from the one Benton and thousands of Tidewater residents have grown up visiting on school field trips and family outings.
A master plan for the zoo's $14.7 million expansion will divide the zoo into continents, each exhibiting the animals native to that part of the world. Africa has been slated as the first continental project because public interest surveys have indicated African animals as being the most popular with zoo visitors.
Future visitors will enter the display through an African village and gaze across invisible, underwater barriers to watch zebras, giraffes, rhinos and ostriches roam freely across a pseudoAfrican plain. Not far away, visitors will see a ``kopje,'' a granite hill rising from the flat grassy plain. The kopje will be home to the lions and smaller animals, reptiles, and insects that are dependent upon each other.
Fund-raising for the master plan will begin by the end of the year with a projected groundbreaking in 1998. Although the master plan has caused a stir of interest in the zoo, the most public enthusiasm has been generated by two small Siberian tiger cubs that had been confiscated from a private owner in 1992 and turned over to the zoo for temporary safekeeping.
The then-cuddly cubs soon won the hearts of children and adults all over Hampton Roads and inspired a campaign, led by Exxon retailers, to raise funds to build a habitat in which the tigers could remain.
Late in September Shaka Khan and her sister, Shere Khan, now well over 300 pounds each, moved into a $500,000 state of the art habitat with 8,000 feet of space, several viewing stations, and best of all for the waterloving tigers, their own private pool.
Benton shares with the Virginia Zoological Society the belief that modern zoos must be more than mere showcases for exotic animals, many of which are endangered species. Already a participant in the international Species Survival Plans that aid in the reproduction and survival of endangered animals, the zoo will focus on the interrelationships between the Earth's animals, plant life and people.
``Zoos need to adopt a preservation attitude and need to learn how to captive propagate within their own facilities,'' Joseph C. Daniel said. Daniel is the chairman of the zoo society's committee to develop an animal survival center on 137 acres of land in Chesapeake. The land, a former hog farm adjacent to the St. Brides Correctional Center, is owned by the city of Norfolk and well suited, Daniel believes, for conversion to a breeding farm for rhinos.
The $1 million survival center would provide research and breeding facilities for white rhinos and black rhinos, both endangered animals and would be open to the public. The project has been temporarily put on hold until funds are raised for zoo expansion, but ``as soon as the financing is in place we are ready to go,'' Daniel said.
The zoo's emphasis on education as well as entertainment was one of Benton's primary reasons for accepting the director's post. His background in education, his love of the outdoors, and his concern for the environment were a good match to the zoo's goals to expand outreach educational programs and to increase the number of special educational events on the zoo grounds.
Benton's love of the outdoors was fostered by long Sunday afternoons roaming the woods around Lake Kilby at his boyhood home in Suffolk. ``In many ways that was more of a church to me than the church I had been in that morning,'' he said.
His father, also named Major, was a selfmade man who started Major Signs company and served a decade as Suffolk's mayor in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He died in 1982. ``He was a great listener and a great negotiator,'' Benton said.
After graduation from Suffolk High School in 1960, Benton went on to the University of Richmond and then the Marine Corps. ``Being in the service was a wonderful experience for me,'' he said. ``It was an education in different cultures, religions, and backgrounds.''
Benton credits his mother, Lillian A. Benton, who is now living in Virginia Beach, with encouraging him to strive to do whatever it was he wanted to do. ``She lives in a retirement community and has said that she often hears people regret things they did not do but she never hears them complain about things they did do,'' he said.
About that unusual first name, Major. Benton is not quite sure of its origin, but family lore has it that his father was named Major after the pastor of a Suffolk Methodist church who had served as a chaplain in the army and held the rank of major. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by PAUL AIKEN
Is this Shaka Khan or Shere Khan? We're not sure, but the sister
tigers live in a $500,000 state-of-the-art habitat that includes a
pool.
Staff photo by RICHARD DUNSTON
Major T. Benton holds a model of the master plan for the zoo's $14.7
million expansion. Fund-raising will begin by the end of the year.
by CNB