I always wanted to be a zookeeper when I was growing up, and I've wound up a zookeeper! I've been working with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years! I'm the luckiest old broad on two feet because my life is divided absolutely in half - half animals and half show business. You can't ask for better than two things you love the most.

I have my golden retriever now, Pontiac. He's a career-change guide dog from Guide Dogs for the Blind.

I'm so compulsive about stuff, I know if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would have been my whole focus. But I didn't choose to have children because I'm focused on my career. And I just don't think, as compulsive as I am, that I could manage both.

I had to make a major decision with myself because I just don't think you can do both: try to have a baby career and raise it and have a baby baby and raise it. And to try to do justice to either one. It was a very conscious decision on my part not to have children - which I have never regretted.

Although I never married, my brother fortunately did, and I have had the pleasure of watching his three sons and daughter grow up. Several of them now have children of their own. We have been a close-knit family, although often separated by distance, and have shared each other's happiness, sorrows, and aspirations.

I can make dressing - or stuffing. Y'all call it stuffing up here, we call it dressing down there. It's really good dressing. That family recipe was passed on, and I love to make that.

I read a lot, but in comparison to my family, it's nothing. I keep telling them, 'I'm the illiterate of the family.' My grandfather used to read five books at a time.

Most of those whom we honor on Memorial Day died young. They never had the chance to raise a family, build a career, attend the weddings of their children, or be honored in old age.