Warren Iliff, 69; Aquarium of the Pacific’s First Chief Executive

Warren Iliff, president emeritus and founding chief executive of the Aquarium of the Pacific, whose energetic leadership helped make the Long Beach waterfront attraction one of Southern California’s leading tourist destinations, has died. He was 69.

Iliff, who retired in 2002 but continued to maintain an office at the aquarium, died of lung cancer Aug. 5 at his home in Long Beach, family members said.

An experienced zoo and aquarium director known for his creativity and marketing and fundraising skills, Iliff became president and chief operating officer of the Aquarium of the Pacific two years before the $117-million attraction opened in 1998 as the fourth-largest such facility in the United States.

The aquarium, which features more than 12,500 ocean animals representing more than 500 species, drew 1.3 million visitors in 2005.

“Warren had an absolutely wonderful sense of humor and was one of the most buoyant personalities I’ve ever met,” Jerry Schubel, who took over as the aquarium’s president and chief executive in 2002, told The Times on Friday.

“He was the perfect person to come in here as the founding CEO because he had to get the community on board and build a staff,” Schubel said. “He had a huge influence on what the exhibits looked like, so he really set the tone for the institution.”

One of Iliff’s most “visible ideas,” Schubel said, is the 88-foot-long fiberglass replica of a blue whale and calf that hang from the ceiling of the Great Hall of the Pacific.

Iliff’s goal in shaping the aquarium’s programs was to raise public awareness of environmental threats to the ocean, The Times reported in 1998.

“We want to orient the community on how lucky we are to have this body of water and that we need to take care of it,” Iliff said.

Described by colleagues as a people person, Iliff, while director from 1975 to 1985 of what is now the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Ore., was known to work at the front gate on Christmas so employees could take the day off.

Iliff also was known for his contagious enthusiasm for all manner of animals, birds and marine life.

As director of the Oregon Zoo, then called the Washington Park Zoo, Iliff and his wife, Ghislaine, would occasionally show up in the middle of the night to help feed and care for young elephants, the Oregonian newspaper reported last week.

Iliff’s sense of fun extended to his office at the Aquarium of the Pacific, which in 1998 housed an array of offbeat items, including an antique diving suit, stuffed penguins, rice paper fish, animal toys, drawings, sculptures and memorabilia collected during his days working at four zoos around the country.

That’s not to mention the plastic ducks’ feet glued to the ceiling and dozens of airsickness bags collected from different airlines. Or, Schubel noted, a huge, plasticized rhinoceros dung.

Recalling Iliff’s “infectious enthusiasm and laugh,” Schubel said, “He was just one of those rare individuals that, whenever you met him, you felt better after the encounter.”

Born Nov. 5, 1936, in Madison, Wis., Iliff grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh and majored in government and economics at Harvard University on a Navy ROTC scholarship.

After graduating in 1958, he served as a Marine Corps helicopter pilot until 1962.

He spent the next few years as a crop-dusting helicopter pilot in Guatemala and Honduras, where he became fascinated with wildlife and created a backyard zoo that included spider monkeys, howler monkeys, a coatimundi, a boa constrictor, yellow-throated parrots and a toucan.

After landing a job with the Air Transport Assn. in Washington, D.C., he volunteered at the National Zoo.

Iliff was special assistant to the zoo’s director, and his wife was an economist at the Belgian Embassy, when they met in 1967.

Iliff also had been director of the Dallas Zoo and Aquarium and executive director of the Phoenix Zoo. He served as president of the American Zoo & Aquarium Assn. and on the board of the Jane Goodall Institute.

In addition to his wife, Iliff is survived by his brother, Bernie.

A private memorial service was held Thursday.

Instead of flowers, his family requests that donations be made to the Aquarium of the Pacific, the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Warren and Ghislaine Iliff Lung Cancer Fund c/o the Pacific Shores Hematology-Oncology Foundation in Long Beach or to a cancer research organization of the donor’s choice.