Zoo History: Willie Don's Dive

“The mayor sputtered.  The crowd went wild”

-          The Baltimore Sun

The spectacular new OdySea Aquarium outside of Phoenix is but one of the many new aquariums that have popped up around the nation in the past few years.  Many cities have opened new aquariums (which, unlike zoos, tend to be compact, year-round attractions) in order to revitalize downtown areas and serve as anchors for development and tourism.   This current renaissance mirrors a spree of development that took place in the 1980s and early 1990s.  Among the cities that opened new aquariums at that time was Baltimore.

Following some less-than-flattering comments from the President, Baltimore – its charms and its warts – was in the news a great deal last year.   The city has had its ups and downs before, and in the late 1970s, it was decidedly a “down.”  In a bold plan to revitalize Charm City, Mayor William Donald Schaefer spearheaded a campaign to restore Baltimore’s iconic Inner Harbor.  What had once brought the city wealth and success through trade, Schaefer now envisioned as a bustling hub of dining, shopping, and entertainment.  As a crown jewel for the new Baltimore, he wanted an aquarium.

Baltimore had previously had an aquarium… sort of.  A small pump house in Druid Hill Park had served as an aquarium before its abandonment; it was later re-purposed as a reptile house by The Baltimore Zoo, before closing its doors for good in 2004.  What Schaefer envisioned was nothing like that, no series of small fish tanks.  Inspired during a recent trip to Boston by the New England Aquarium, itself a fairly new facility, he wanted something big and iconic, with sharks and dolphins and sea turtles, and he was determined to get it.  And he was willing to stake his reputation on it.

Schaefer famously declared that the aquarium was going to make its scheduled opening date of June 1, 1981, otherwise he was going to jump into the seal pool.  Construction being construction, the deadline came and went.  Many politicians might have said that they were speaking metaphorically.  Schaefer went out and got a bathing suit.  “I’m a man of my word,” he simply said.

On July 15, Schaefer, accompanied by Aquarium Board Chairman Frank Gunther Jr, took the plunge.  Inflatable duck in hand, clad in an old-timey striped bathing suit, Schaefer waded into the seal pool, even going completely underwater at one point, until only his straw boated hat was left floating on the surface.  A model dressed in a mermaid costume reclined on a rock in the middle of the habitat, who swam over and gave the mayor a peck on the cheek.

I should probably mention that the seal pool at this time was currently occupied by a mixed company of gray and harbor seals, all of whom seemed to take the political grandstanding in stride.

The aquarium – what became the National Aquarium inBaltimore – opened up later that summer, less than a month after the mayor’s swim. 

William Donald Schaefer went on to serve as Governor of Maryland, then Comptroller, an icon of state politics until his death in 2011.  The seal pool has since vanished, lost during the construction of the aquarium’s Australian expansion about a decade ago.   The aquarium no longer houses seals.  This isn’t to say that there is no trace of Schaefer’s escapades.

This April, the National Aquarium unveiled its new mural, “Schaefer’s Splash,” just inside the main entrance.  Among the guests to celebrate was one Deborah Lee Walker.  Some visitors might have noticed a more than passing resemblance between her and the mermaid depicted in the mural, and sure enough, she had been sitting on that rock that day, surrounded by Schaefer and the seals.

I don’t know if a stunt like Schaefer’s would go over well today.  There is always an element of danger and liability in allowing members of the public to interact with animals (even during Schaefer’s splash, an aquarium staffer was bobbing along ready to intervene should Ike, the aquarium’s big bull grey seal, decide that he wanted to chomp the mayor on the leg).  At the moment, it was probably what both the aquarium and Baltimore as a whole needed.

Aquariums and zoos are important for conservation and education and research – but they can also serve as important symbols of civic pride.  They can give a community something to unite behind and root for.  They can serve as pillars of a community.

Surely that was worth a cold dip on a July morning?  Schaefer seemed to think so.  When asked about his dive by reporters after climbing out, he replied, “Given the chance, I’d do it again.”