Taylor Parks' music director meets Dr. Jane Goodall

Tammy Keen, director of music at Taylor Parks Elementary School, was recently able to attend a lecture given by Dr. Jane Goodall, considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees. 

Keen and her husband, Joe, spend their summers at an exotic big cat rescue refuge in Florida. Both are animal activists and were very excited to be able to meet Goodall during the lecture and photo session.

Goodall is best known for her 45-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. Through her unyielding patience, she was able to win the trust and open a window into these sometimes strange and shy creatures. To this day, the public remains fascinated by her work. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues, inspiring support on behalf of endangered species (particularly chimpanzees).

"Meeting Dr. Goodall was a once-in-a-lifetime experience," Keen said.

Born in England in 1934, Goodall was given a life-like chimpanzee doll named Jubilee, and thus began a lifelong love for animals. In 1957, Goodall made an acquaintance of Louis Leakey, a Kenyan archaeologist and paleontologist, who believed that the study of existing great apes could provide indications of the behavior of early man. Four years later, Goodall became the first of "Leakey's Angels," a group of women funded by Leakey to study apes in their original habitat.

Goodall's work in Tanzania is best known for challenging two specific issues of the day: That only humans could construct and use tools, and that chimpanzees were vegetarians. Among other observations, she also noted an aggressive side to chimpanzee behavior, including the group hunting of smaller primates and violence between the chimpanzee troops.

In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, which supports Gombe research. Among her awards: Named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and being named a United Nations Messenger of Peace.

To share her meeting, Keen donated a copy of Goodall's biography to the Taylor Parks Elementary School library.

For more on the Jane Goodall Institute, click here.