Insider

Jack Hannah

Photo by Dan Trittschuh

Jack Hanna’s tireless promotion persuaded a celebrity interviewer on the talk-show circuit to check out the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. In late May, Mike Huckabee, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, visited the zoo and its sister property, the Wilds. He stayed overnight at a yurt in the Wilds’s Nomad Ridge development and broadcast his radio show from the 10,000-acre preserve near Zanesville. Hanna, a frequent guest on Huckabee’s Fox News TV show, says the visit left the former governor of Arkansas impressed, especially of the Wilds. “He said it was just like Africa,” Hanna says.

Hanna also tells Insider that someday visitors might have a chance to stay overnight in a yurt at the zoo, just as they now can at the Wilds. As zoo officials consider what to include in a planned expansion of the zoo’s African Forest section, they are contemplating whether to build upscale yurts like the ones at the Wilds’s popular Nomad Ridge, Hanna says. But don’t expect to get a chance to wake up to the sound of a lion roaring anytime soon. Zoo spokeswoman Patty Peters says the idea is “very long term” and isn’t part of the first phase of expansion, which is to begin next year.

Powerhouse attorney Larry James, known for his bipartisan political connections, has been at the center of the Tattoo-gate scandal. The partner at Crabbe, Brown & James represents not only ex-Buckeye quarterback Terrelle Pryor, but also the current players suspended for exchanging memorabilia for tattoos (Daniel “Boom” Herron, DeVier Posey, Mike Adams and Solomon Thomas) and the nine implicated by Sports Illustrated in the June cover story that helped push Jim Tressel out the door. James says he met Pryor about a year ago, though he can’t remember how they were introduced. Thanks to that connection, Pryor and the four others involved in the first stage of the scandal hired him. “I think the athletes and their parents were pretty pleased with the representation,” James says. “So next, the Sports Illustrated article comes out and those athletes had heard about what we had done, and that was the natural sequence of events.” James says his colleagues Jeff Brown and Christina Corl also are working on the cases.

While Tressel and Pryor left Ohio State in shame this spring, a once-disgraced Buckeye sports official continued his career rejuvenation at the school. More than a decade ago, Jerry Emig (he went by “Gerry” back then) resigned from his job as director of athletic communications after a basketball media guide referred to OSU alumnus Richard Lewis as an “Actor, Writer, Comedian, Drunk.” After working in the private sector and at the Ohio Board of Regents, Emig returned to OSU athletics communications in 2007. Since then, he has overseen some of the minor sports at the university, such as softball and swimming. But in May, he was reassigned to lead football communications, the most high-profile job in the department, replacing Shelly Poe, who takes over his old responsibilities.

At a Columbus Metropolitan Club talk in mid June, Shadowbox CEO Stev Guyer said Seven Deadly Sins, the troupe’s co-production with BalletMet, was so popular the two arts organizations are considering taking it on tour. Guyer also said the unusual production, the subject of a Columbus Monthly feature story (“A sinful collaboration”—June), has inspired Shadowbox to explore forming similar partnerships with other arts groups.