A Look Back: Images from 1983

PHOTO: PMP ARCHIVES

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 50th anniversary

In the January 1983 issue, contributing author John Kerr gave a decade-by-decade look at the history of the magazine, then called Pest Control. He featured a few vintage photos, including this one whose caption is: “Work with 1080 rodenticide is shown above. L. Costa, from Brazil, Jud Pestana, of J P Chemical Company, Amherst, NH, John Osmun, from Purdue University, Ronald Hunt, a PCO from Whittier, CA, and Bill Rickel, left to right, accomplished this work in 1954. Also in 1954, Pest Control included the U.S. Public Health Service’s annual Communicable Disease Center recommendations for the use of pesticides of public health importance in its March issue.” Not credited in the caption are the dozens of dead rodents in front of the men. Dr. Osmun became a member of the Pest Management Professional (PMP) Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 1997.

Tackling resistance in cockroaches and rodents

IMAGE: PMP ARCHIVES

In the April 1983 issue, meanwhile, Editor Jerry Mix (another PMP Hall of Famer, Class of 2005) reported on a panel discussion that took place during the 1982 National Pest Control Association Conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

That annual event is now known as PestWorld, hosted by what is now known as the National Pest Management Association. The presentation was titled “Resistance: Are We Prepared?” and featured Stephen Frantz, New York State Department of Health and former director of the Rodent Evaluation Laboratory in Albany, NY; Dr. Bill Jackson, a longtime director of industry fraternity Pi Chi Omega and a professor at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University’s Environmental Studies Center; and Rex Marsh, a vertebrate biologist at the University of California, Davis, on the rodent resistance side. On the cockroach resistance side were Dr. William Robinson, then-associate entomology professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and today an industry consultant, as well as PMP Hall of Famers Dr. Gary Bennett, a now-retired entomology professor at Purdue University (Class of 2006) and Don Reierson, who continues today as an entomology staff research associate at the University of California, Riverside (Class of 2014). The presentation was the talk of the conference, and our issue’s cover drove home the point with an illustration (whose creator, unfortunately, goes uncredited) of a pest management professional arm wrestling with a very intense rat.

View the full articles from January 1983 and April 1983.