Ralph Quinlan was born Ralph Gwyn Isaac in Lenoir, NC 20 April 1925 and was raised up here until he was 15 years old, at which time he decided to run away from home and join the circus....kind of. He grew up on roller skates in Lenoir so his first forte into show business was with a roller skating act and he was soon taught to do the same on ice skates. By the late 1940's Ralph found what he really loved.....animals. He started training chimpanzees most famously Zippy the chimp who appeared on T.V. with Jackie Gleason, Phil Silvers, Johnny Carson, Mike Douglas, David Letterman, Ed Sullivan and many others. Zippy also starred as Cheatta in a few of the Tarzan movies from the 1950's including 1955's Tarzan's Hidden Jungle. In the early 1960's Ralph became involved with Dolphins, training them, and performing shows before eventually returning to Lincolnton, N.C. to open Quinlan's Porpoise Training School around 1965. This school trained and provided Dolphins for shows all over the country until the early 1980's when it became too expensive to be profitable.....but Ralph still had other business interests! He mastered the wheels, the ice, the oceans and even the animals but what about the air? Back in 1974 Ralph started an air service for commercial transport called Mountain Air Cargo which he sold in 1982 and which is still in business till this day as one of the major contractors of FedEx Express. But wait, that's not all! In 1979 Quinlan founded the regional airline Sunbird also known as "The Carolina Connection" which flew all over the south eastern U.S.. By 1984 I guess Ralph had conquered enough and sold out this last remaining business interest. Ralph died in Lincolnton 20 February 2004 after living 3 mens' lives....not bad for a runaway from Caldwell County!
Above from Contributor: daviDJames (50248499)