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from work--walks over to her apartment.  But this time she was coming home at ten o'clock at night, so she stopped outside the zoo gates, I think she pressed a button, and then she announced to nobody in particular, "This is Billy Hamlet; I want to put my car on the A parking lot." The gates swung open, and she drove her car in, the gates closed behind her, and she walked out and said again, "This is Billy Hamlet; I'm leaving the zoo."  It was all done by pushbutton in the police headquarters which are way on the other side of the park, near Adams Mill Road, and this was Connecticut Avenue.

Henson: That would be eerie not seeing anyone, just have it go back and forth.  I guess things were a lot more informal in those days.

Mann: Oh, they certainly were.

Henson: Was the money actually coming from the District of Columbia? It wasn't federal tax money? It was from the District?

Mann: Yes, District.  The District needed money for other things, of course, firemen, and police, and schools, and hospitals, and it was hard to get enough money for the zoo.

Henson:  Was that because it was viewed as a District park?

Mann: Yes, but it wasn't. It was always the national zoo. In the early days the federal government paid half of the cost and the District paid the other half because, of course, the District residents