SAN ANTONIO — "Yah Kozmo likes me because I have food. As soon as the food is gone, Kozmo is gone," said San Antonio Zoo Executive Director Tim Morrow.
He's one of San Antonio’s best, and his life has been touched by adoption.
"I always knew I was adopted ever since I was a little child, and all my friends knew that I was adopted," he said. "It was just part of my story."
In the days before the information superhighway, his birth mother, Jean, tracked him down.
"She’s seen my life bloom with the kids, and the family, moving from Dallas to San Antonio. My career job path from Fiesta Texas to Sea World to the zoo, so it’s been really fun to have her in my life," Morrow said. "She comes down and visits about twice a year, and we go up there, so we’ve become great friends. We have a great relationship, and we see her all the time, which is nice. She comes and visits the zoo. Usually she lands, comes down to the zoo, and we start here, and then we do the rest of the week with the kids."
For nearly 30 years now she’s been that mother, and that grandmother to his kids—part of the family. His adopted family, always with open arms.
"Jean is very close to my sister, who is adopted from another family. She was close to my parents. They’ve passed in recent years, but she’s been here for funerals, she’s been here for babies and birthdays, so she’s been very connected to the entire family," Morrow said.
"How did you get the grandma name JeJe? We just made that up," said Jean Tulipane, Tim's birth mother. "There were so many grandmothers for a while. Tim’s mom, Jenn’s mom, and then me."
"A bonus family is really what you get," Morrow added. "A connection to things you’ve been wondering about your whole life. Who do I look like? Why do I do the things that I do? So now you see that connection, and now you have this giant extended family, which is really nice."
Life is on top of the world these days for the executive director of the San Antonio Zoo. His start in life os only part of his life story.
"It was just part of how I grew up, and what I knew, so it’s never been something that I’ve ever thought about other than just that’s who I am," Morrow said. "And that’s seemed normal to me, and that still seems totally normal to me. That’s just how I came about."