What are the Bobo the Gorilla Tapes?

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a small cassette tape deck, I recorded a series of audio interviews with key people in Bobo's life, Bill and Jean Lowman, who had raised Bobo at home (Ray Lowman had passed away), and Bobo's last keeper at Woodland Park Zoo, Pat Pichette.

The tapes were originally intended as background for a book about Bobo, but I was unable to complete the project at the time and tapes and other research material went into storage.  During a recent clear-out of my storage unit I rediscovered the tapes, listened to them, and realized that I had in the tapes a rare historic archive about Bobo, particularly as all of the people I had interviewed have since passed on.

Some of the stories on these tapes, told by the people who were there, have never been made public, including startling revelations by Bobo's keeper about his death and the events which led up to it, something which has always held an element of mystery.

I am now working on turning the tapes into a digital audiobook, but in order to complete the process of digitization, audio cleanup, editing, and publishing, I need to raise enough funds to do all of the above.

If you're a fan of Bobo, I hope you'll help by donating here, using the PayPal donate button.  Along with the audiobook, which will be offered through Open Book Audio when it is complete, clips of the tapes will also be donated to the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, to be included in MOHAI's Bobo exhibit.

Who was Bobo the Gorilla?

Bobo the Gorilla

Bobo the gorilla was and is an iconic part of Pacific Northwest history. Purchased as an infant from a Columbus, Ohio, game hunter by Anacortes, Washington, commercial fisherman, Bill Lowman, in December 1951, Bobo was raised by Bill and his parents, Jean and Ray Lowman, for the next two years very much like a human child, in their home in the small Puget Sound town.

Bobo and the Lowmans became an instant media sensation, appearing on The Movietone News, the popular television program "You Asked for It," and in countless newspapers and magazines, including a photo feature in Life.

The Lowmans, Bill, Jean, Ray, and Bill's two young daughters, Susan and Claudia, bonded closely with the little gorilla, who became as much a part of their family as if he were a human child.  So, it was a wrench when the family realized that they could no longer handle the young Lowland gorilla's growing strength and the difficult decision was made to sell Bobo the Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo.

In December, 1951, Bobo made the move from a human home to the zoo, a transition eased by Jean Lowman taking up extended around-the-clock residence with Bobo in his first cage to help the young primate for whom she had been surrogate mother settle in.

Bobo was the first gorilla at Woodland Park Zoo and became its highly-publicized star attraction.  He grew to adulthood there, but his natural life expectancy was cut short when he died unexpectedly in 1968 from a blood clot which apparently broke loose from a bruise on his leg.

Following his death, Bobo's skeleton was given to the Burke Museum at the University of Washington, and his hide was taxidermied and put on display at Seattle's Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI).  After the death of Bill, Jean and Ray Lowman, Bobo's childhood memorabilia and the family's scrapbooks were also given to the MOHAI collection by Bill's daughters.