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The Front Row: Moody Gardens

On this episode of the Front Row, Clint Barrick talks with Ashley Tompkins and Alexis Shelly about the fun, entertaining and educational things to do at Moody Gardens.

For those who might not know, Ashley give us a bit of information about Moody Gardens itself.

Like you said, Moody Gardens is really a hidden gem in the state of Texas. We actually started in the 80s with therapy and we were offering horse therapy for people on the island in the area who had head injuries. So we kind of started off that way, very small with a horse barn and a few different things that we were doing there. We’ve really grown from there.

Moody Gardens is a gift to the city of Galveston from the Moody family. Over the years we’ve grown from that little stable to now more than 200 acres of different attractions and educational facilities that are all on one property. But we still have the first building that we had. If you go to where our education building is now, you can still see the barn doors from where the horses were back when we had the therapy program there.

As We move from winter to spring, I assume some of your programming changes. Are there new things you want people to come see?

So spring break is just around the corner and Moody Gardens is not too far to get away to for a week. There’s plenty to do on the island itself. We’ve got the aquarium pyramid, which we just finished up a 37 million dollar renovation over there last summer. So that is completely open. If you’ve not been before, it is breath-taking.

It’s all the exhibits that you’ve loved forever—we have our penguins, or seals and our sea lions—we also added a few cool new things. We added a new species of penguins that are actually sub-tropical. So they come from Chile and Peru. So you get to see a different type of penguin. Most people think all penguins are cold but it’s not true…

Listen to the full interview at the top of the article.

Clinton Barrick is the Director of Programming for the network of stations that comprise Texas Tech Public Radio. He has served in this capacity for over twenty-five years, providing Classical Music to the airwaves of the South Plains and expanding Texas Tech Public Radio’s offering of news and cultural programs in response to station and network growth.