Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Lisa Buehler

All about the wildlife

- KIMBERLY DISHONGH

Lisa Buehler has always loved animals. She grew up in Kansas City, Mo., and the Kansas City Zoo was one of her favorite places. In Little Rock, she took her daughter, Amanda, to the Halloween-themed Boo at the Zoo at the Little

Rock Zoo.

She volunteere­d the next year, passing out bowls of candy.

“I wanted to know how to get more involved because I wanted my daughter to grow up having that same love for animals that I had,” says Buehler, vice president of Allegra Print and Imaging of Arkansas Inc./Image 360, the company she co-owns with her husband, Darwin.

Within a year, Buehler had completed training to become a docent and show the zoo’s birds of prey, reptiles, mammals, parrots, insects and more to visitors.

“At that time my daughter was 5,” she says, “and if I was just in there helping clean cages for the education animals she could be there with me, so she got to play with ferrets and rabbits and little creepy things. She loved it.”

As her daughter grew and developed more diverse interests, Buehler’s volunteer focus at the zoo evolved into serving on committees and organizing fundraiser­s like Zoo Brew and Wild Wines. Now she is chairman of the Arkansas Zoological Foundation, the nonprofit group that raises money and community awareness for the Little Rock Zoo.

Buehler is on the event committee for the 11th annual Wild Wines, which will raise money to renovate the education building where she spent so much time during her early relationsh­ip with the zoo.

The two-night Wild Wines includes a VIP Reserve Room event 7-9 p.m. Friday in the zoo’s Cafe Africa with wines selected by Jonathan Looney, owner of O’Looney’s Wine and Liquor. Dinner and desserts will be provided by the Capital Hotel, Cache Restaurant, So restaurant, YaYa’s Euro Bistro

“I admire my parents. My mom spent a lot of time volunteeri­ng and doing things at the school when I was younger. I may not have appreciate­d those things like I should have at that age.And my dad just spent a lot of time working, and his work ethic was instilled in me.”

and Cocoa Belle Chocolates and Cupcakes on Kavanaugh. Penguins and other animals will make appearance­s during the event.

Tickets to the Reserve Room are $150 and include admission to the second event, the Wild Wines Grand Tasting, 7-10 p.m. Saturday on the concourse at War Memorial Stadium, which is near the zoo.

The latter event will feature tastings of 150 wines, also selected by Looney; food from about 50 area restaurant­s; music by Rodney Block and the Real Music Lovers and Synergy; and a stage where animals will perform throughout the evening. Tickets to the Grand Tasting are $75.

“Something unique is that we will fly one of our birds on the War Memorial field,” says Susan Altrui, zoo director. “It’s going to be really dramatic.”

The education building will not just get a face-lift with these funds. It’s to be transforme­d into a conservati­on education center.

“Right now our education building is not open to the public, and we think that’s a shame,” Altrui says. “Our education building should be open to the public whenever the zoo is open, so that’s our goal with this fundraisin­g project. We want to raise enough money so that we can turn it into a place that encourages conservati­on play.”

HER EAR TO THE GROUND

Altrui met Buehler shortly after Altrui became the zoo’s director of marketing and developmen­t 12 years ago.

“I immediatel­y came to know her as someone who was very passionate about the zoo and its mission for conservati­on education,” Altrui says. The zoo director also knew about Buehler’s work with some other nonprofits around town, such as the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas.

Buehler served as a Women’s Foundation board member from 2007 to 2010 and was chairman of the organizati­on’s annual Power of the Purse luncheon in 2008.

Margy Niel of El Dorado met Buehler through the Women’s Foundation.

Niel, a past Arkansas Zoological Foundation board member, and Buehler were kindred spirits from the beginning.

“Lisa is bubbly and funny and involved in a lot of different things. You just gravitate toward her. Most people just can’t help it,” Niel says. “She is such an encourager. Even if she’s had a bad day she’s going to find something good in it.”

The pair are also travel buddies. Most recently they visited Cuba to celebrate Buehler’s 50th birthday, and before that they went to Costa Rica.

“If you can travel together and not kill each other, you know it’s going to stick,” Niel says. The Buehlers are the perfect people to travel with “because they want to immerse themselves wherever they are,” she says. The women jokingly call each other Thelma and Louise “because if she’s not talking me into something, I’m talking her into something.”

Buehler persuaded Niel to support United Cerebral Palsy of Arkansas. “I think there are a lot of things in my life that I wouldn’t be involved with if it weren’t for Lisa Buehler,” Niel says.

Aaron Perkins, owner of Face Your Day Salon, met Buehler when she was chairman of a fundraiser for United Cerebral Palsy three years ago. “I started styling her then,” he says. “She’s a retainer client, which means we get her ready for anything she has coming up.”

Buehler’s involvemen­t with United Cerebral Palsy, the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College’s Diamond Chef fundraiser and Wild Wines led to Perkins’ support, as well, whether in the form of sponsorshi­ps or auction items.

Buehler’s company printed the product labels for the Aaron Charles cosmetics line Perkins recently launched.

“Just like I trust her to do what she knows is best, she trusts us to do what we know is best,” he says. “When she is in my chair she says, ‘Just do what you do because I know you won’t steer me wrong.’”

FAMILY TRADITION

Buehler makes time for her friends like Altrui, Niel, Perkins and others, and she remains on the United Cerebral Palsy board as well as boards of the Zoological Foundation and Women & Children First.

“I like being involved with things that are good for the people in the city,” says Buehler, who dashes between appointmen­ts in a sporty Mercedes SLK hardtop convertibl­e that Darwin gave her for their 25th wedding anniversar­y three years ago.

She says United Cerebral Palsy helps more people than just those with cerebral palsy. And Women & Children First has one of the largest shelters in the state for individual­s and families who are survivors of domestic violence.

Her daughter, now 25, enjoys taking her own children — 6-year-old Russ and 11-month-old Jackson — to the Little Rock Zoo. Buehler, of course, is there often.

“I love the fact that it’s interactiv­e — it gets the kids involved, it gets the parents involved. It’s fun to see their faces when you go out,” Buehler says.

Her grandchild­ren spend several nights a week with her while Amanda works as a chef.

Darwin was Lisa’s supervisor at a Hardee’s in Kansas City, Mo., when she was 16. They got married in 1988 and moved to Little Rock in 1990 when Lisa was 24. Darwin was a district manager for Hardee’s, and she was opening one of their restaurant­s in west Little Rock.

When Darwin was asked to take on more responsibi­lity for the same pay, he decided it was time to do something different. Darwin left his job 10 months after they got here.

“That’s how we got into the printing business, in a nutshell,” Lisa Buehler says.

FROM SCRATCH

While Darwin set off to learn the printing industry and open their business, Buehler worked in the restaurant business, at Applebee’s, for three years to bring in money while he got things up and running.

Much like she de-emphasizes the amount of time she spends volunteeri­ng, Buehler downplays the effort it took to learn a new industry and open a new business.

“It’s all customer-service related, and we already knew customer service,” she says. “But clearly we were stepping out of our comfort zone and getting into something we had never been in the middle of. The learning curve was pretty steep. The printing business was not then nearly what it is today. It was a lot of fun. It’s still a lot of fun.”

The day Darwin came home from a franchise training session, she informed him that she was pregnant. They adapted quickly after the baby was born. “There were a lot of Saturdays when [Amanda] was at work with him, and he would take her to daycare and bring her home if I was working weird shifts,” Lisa Buehler says. “We had a lot of help from our parents, too.” Buehler’s mother, the late Dorothy Hauser, was a dedicated volunteer at Buehler’s elementary school when Buehler was young, assisting with the girl’s extracurri­cular activities. Buehler’s mother and father, the late Wiley Hauser, took their only daughter on many a road trip. “The one I remember distinctly was with my cousin for two weeks,” she says. “We started in Kansas City and went through Nebraska and South Dakota and North Dakota and Montana and up into Canada and down through Colorado and Wyoming and back across Kansas, so it was a lot of fun.”

She and Darwin have done a fair amount of traveling with their own only child as well.

“She did six countries in 10 days with us,” Lisa Buehler says. “And she went to Alaska with us on a cruise when she was 9 or 10.”

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Wherever she roams, Buehler makes a point of visiting an area’s accredited zoo. She went to the one in Rome, and she has gone to zoos in Chicago and Seattle, the Smithsonia­n’s National Zoo in Washington and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson.

“I’m interested in the conservati­on and seeing

what they do,” she says. “I just still have a passion for animals, and I just like to go see how they’re doing their zoo and their exhibits and what animals they may have that we don’t have.” She is proud of the conservati­on efforts championed by leaders of the Little Rock Zoo and the foundation board she chairs. For example, the Little Rock Zoo has agreed to make contributi­ons over the next three years to an Associatio­n of Zoos and Aquariums program called Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE), and the Zoological Foundation will match those donations. The Somali wild asses on exhibit at the Little Rock Zoo are endangered animals. “They are on a species survival plan,” Buehler explains. “We have made conservati­on donations to organizati­ons that help support them in the wild to help keep them from being extinct. The Cheetah Conservati­on Fund is another one we support.” Darwin is also engaged in the nonprofit scene. He serves on the Pulaski Technical College Foundation board and was the co-chairman of Diamond Chef with Lisa a few years back. “I’ve always said that there is a group of about 30 to 50 women that run the city. If you need something done, you call one of those women. Lisa is one of those women,” he says.

Her superpower, Darwin implies, is community service.

“You’ll think there’s no way she could get involved in another charity, but then someone will call and she’s off and running to do whatever needs to be done,” he says.

 ?? Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHA­L ??
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHA­L
 ?? File photo/HELAINE R. WILLIAMS ?? Elizabeth Andreoli, Lisa Buehler and Joseph Goellner chat at Spring Safari, a Little Rock Zoo benefit held earlier this month at the home of the Rev. Betsy and Vic Snyder in Little Rock.
File photo/HELAINE R. WILLIAMS Elizabeth Andreoli, Lisa Buehler and Joseph Goellner chat at Spring Safari, a Little Rock Zoo benefit held earlier this month at the home of the Rev. Betsy and Vic Snyder in Little Rock.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States