I first met Jane Goodall in 1988 when her Institute’s office was located in, of all places, the desert town of Tucson on Speedway right next to the Post Office.
At that time, Bazy Tankersley of Al-Marah Arabians knew of my interest in the Rainforest and she was helping me plan my horseback ride across America and knew I needed to promote the ride and there was no better Rainforest advocate than Jane Goodall, so Bazy introduced us and that was the beginning of a friendship and an early on mentorship that lasted 30 years.
She helped us promote the Ride Across America and helped us raise money for “her” Rainforest and she wrote the foreword for my book “The Long Ride” and I’ll always remember, a talk I had with her in 1992 when I was living in Ohio and finishing my doctorate in Environmental Sciences and the President of Ohio University who knew I was attending and that Jane was serving (for moral support) on my dissertation committee, because of my connection, asked me to ask her to come to OU and speak to the students.
At that time, Jane was speaking all around the world to very large audiences and her operation in the Rainforest was growing quickly with a large body of research and more primates than ever before and so she was very busy and I was skeptical that she would say yes, but nevertheless, I reached out to ask her to come and speak with maybe 2000 students and to my surprise she agreed with one caveat, and that was I would need to meet with her for dinner in Cleveland Ohio of all places to discuss her talk and who the audience would be so she could prepare and also, I had asked her to write the foreword for my book and she had agreed but she wanted to discuss it with me, so I reluctantly left the “hollers” of southern Ohio and drove to Cleveland.
Keep in mind, I was living as a minimalist student in the hills of southern Ohio with just my horses and dogs and I had sworn off the “fast lifestyle” and so the urban Cleveland jungle just wasn’t my cup of tea anymore and I also didn’t like the Browns football team, but because she was helping with so much and she had agreed to speak with a small group of students at OU, I agreed to leave the forest and drive to Cleveland in my “beater” Honda Accord and long story short, it was a great dinner at a little dive bar in yucky downtown Cleveland next to the football stadium (did I mention I didn’t like the Cleveland Browns), and we (I more than she) drank a lot of Guinness if I remember correctly thru the beer fog and in the end, she wrote a beautiful foreword for my book, my dissertation was approved, and over 5000 students attended her talk in the very small Memorial Auditorium on the main college green and it was standing room only as she spoke and answered questions for four hours (two hours longer than planned).
During that time, you could hear a pin drop as she brought “her” jungle alive by bringing students up on stage and teaching us how to communicate the sounds of a Chimpanzee and their meaning and it was such a great time for everyone.
Afterwards, she went to dinner with a small group of us at the President’s house, it was a special day like no other for everyone.
She was an amazing person, quietly reflective at times and passionate and upbeat always, she really knew how to bring an audience into her world with her primates, her stories were mesmerizing and you would literally lose track of time, they don’t make people like her anymore, she was as sincere a person as there ever was, zero pretense and completely 110% focused on her research and advocacy for the natural world.
She was a hero for so many and a mentor for me way back when and a role model for many many more throughout her career. It seems now like a long time ago, but it all came flowing back yesterday, and I felt compelled to write it down because these untold stories of how she lived and how she led and what she meant to so many will disappear forever if not told so I just felt a need to say all this about her as others will now pick up the baton and carry on, suffice it to say, knowing her made my ride better.