Jack Hanna was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. He grew up on his father\'s farm and volunteered for the family veterinarian, Dr. Roberts, when he was 11. He attended The Kiski School, an all-boys boarding school in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania, for high school, graduating in 1965. He majored in business and political science at Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio, where he got in trouble for keeping ducks in his dorm room and a donkey in a shed behind his fraternity house (The M.A.C.E. Club). In his senior year, Hanna married Suzi, a cheerleader at Muskingum, and graduated in 1968.\n', '

Although unable to secure zoning as a zoo for his father\'s farm, Hanna and Suzi opened a pet shop and petting zoo. In 1973, a three-year-old boy was mauled by a lion at Hanna\'s farm and lost his arm. Hanna settled the subsequent lawsuit out of court, shut down the petting zoo, and moved his family to Florida.\n', '

He worked for a wildlife adventure company and directed the small Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens from 1973 to 1975. When he was offered the position at the Columbus Zoo in 1978, one of the reasons he accepted was because he believed Nationwide Children\'s Hospital in Columbus had the best treatment available for his daughter Julie\'s leukemia. She recovered by the age of six, although she needed to have a brain tumor removed later in life.\n', 'At the time he became the zoo\'s director, the grounds of the zoo were unkempt and the facilities run down. Hanna initially struck many as a "zealous" zoo director, often traveling around the zoo grounds after closing to personally pick up trash. He also realized the importance of increasing the profile of the Columbus Zoo in central Ohio to get more public support and funding, and the "everyman"-seeming Hanna proved to be very well-suited to public relations for the zoo. From 1981-83, Hanna hosted a local television program, "Hanna\'s Ark", which aired on the local CBS affiliate in Columbus, WBNS. Hanna\'s live animal demonstrations on Good Morning America and David Letterman\'s talk show incarnations brought national attention to the Columbus Zoo as well as to Hanna himself. Over the course of Hanna\'s tenure as director, the zoo made the transition from cage-like enclosures to habitat environments, and the grounds were significantly expanded. The annual attendance of the Columbus Zoo increased by over 400% during this time. Hanna was named Director Emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in 1992.\n', '

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