GRAPHIC: PMP STAFF
Since 1996, Pest Management Professional (PMP) magazine has proudly inducted 110 innovators, pioneers, educators, advocates and other legends who have made meaningful contributions to the professional pest management field. The accomplishments of this year’s class are a continuation of the concept, as you’ll see in their profiles on the next few pages. The PMP staff is preparing to host another black-tie dinner celebration and induction ceremony on Oct. 21, the night before the National Pest Management Association’s (NPMA) PestWorld 2024 takes place at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center in Denver, Colo.
We’ll have coverage of that event both online and in an upcoming issue. In the meantime, you can peruse the profiles of past inductees and celebrations, and nominate someone for the next PMP Hall of Fame, set for 2026 in Dallas, Texas.
Dr. Harold Harlan, BCE
Dr. Harold Harlan, BCE
Dr. Harold Harlan, BCE, grew up in a large family that did not have a lot of money. He worked hard to earn scholarships to pay for college, where he planned to major in agriculture. But as fate would have it, one class changed the course of his life.
“Dr. Paul Freytag introduced me to entomology in a class I took during my junior year of undergraduate college. He made that course so interesting,” he recalls. “I didn’t know if I could even major in entomology, so I asked. I promptly changed my major, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
After changing his major to entomology in 1965, he earned his bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University in 1967. A year later, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He learned he could become an Army Entomologist if he earned his master’s degree. “I met those goals and had a successful 25-year active-duty Army career, retiring in 1994,” he reports.
Dr. Harlan’s career did not end there, however. In 1994, he became an adjunct professor for the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He gave invited lectures and lab sessions in its Tropical Medicine Courses annually through 2017.
In addition, Dr. Harlan has been an active member of the Entomological Society of America (ESA) for 56 years; his involvement extends to symposia, testing and outreach and service on several committees. Most notably, he coined the term Associate Certified Entomologist (ACE), and helped develop related requirements and procedures for it, as well as the Board Certified Entomologist (BCE) certification.
The ACE certification is designed for professionals whose training in entomology has been achieved through continuing education, self-study, and on-the-job experience, whereas a college degree is required for BCE certification.
Patricia Hottel, BCE
Patricia Hottel, BCE
Patricia “Pat” Hottel, BCE, is a respected pest management trainer and leader thanks to another Pest Management Professional (PMP) Hall of Famer. Dr. Austin Frishman, who was inducted as part of the Class of 2002, put her on the path to pest control.
“Dr. Frishman is why I’m here,” she says. “He was quite the dynamic teacher and worked to actively recruit students into his program. Not too many of us started as entomology majors or were considering structural pest management as a career. I entered college as a biology major and left as an entomologist. I will forever be thankful to him for that.”
Learning and teaching have been the hallmarks of Hottel’s career. She has spent nearly five decades sharing her pest control knowledge, first at Bermuda Pest Control, and then at McCloud Services. Because of the latter company’s 2019 acquisition by Terminix, and 2022 acquisition by Rentokil, she now works for Rentokil Terminix.
“Making sure I provide technical and training support for technicians always has been important to me,” she says. As a technical manager with a primary role in fumigation, Hottel says her main job at the company is technical support. She is still involved in training, too.
“Dr. Frishman would say, ‘Your success is my success,’” Hottel explains. “As a trainer, I have used that attitude through the years to guide me in what I do. When serving in my training and technical roles, I use his words in focusing on what is really important. The goal is to make sure those I support are successful.”
Dr. William H. Robinson
Dr. William H. Robinson
Born in 1943, Dr. William H. Robinson, was the oldest of four boys growing up in North Philadelphia, Pa., and insects were the last thing on his mind during childhood. He jokingly refers to himself as a “street urchin” until fifth grade, when the family moved to New Jersey, and he found friends who showed him how to play baseball and soccer.
“They said let’s teach him how to punt and run fast,” he teases. “In baseball, they sent me to right field because, well, no one ever hits to right field.”
In high school, Dr. Robinson gravitated toward wrestling — a team sport and yet he could work on his individual progress. “We all were starting on a level playing field,” he explains. From high school to college, his wrestling weight was 137 pounds. He was third on the mat and lettered in wrestling as a college freshman.
That was at Maryville College in Tennessee, which served about 1,200 students at the time. He and his freshman roommate knew they had to pick a major at the end of their first semester. They also knew they couldn’t just major in “girls.” They made a pact to major in whatever subject they earned an A in first.
“Well, right away, Steve gets an A in math,” Dr. Robinson goodheartedly grumbles. “It took me forever to get an A in anything, but it turned out to be biology.”
Dr. Robinson wasn’t too excited about a biology degree until the following semester, when his professor was actually an entomologist with a doctoral degree. It sealed his fate.
A year later, however, he found he was trading in the small college life in Tennessee for the much bigger campus of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The reason was a college girlfriend. The education lasted much longer than the relationship. As Dr. Robinson notes pragmatically, “Sometimes you get your heart broken, and sometimes it changes your direction.”
It led him back to his high school sweetheart, Carol, to whom he has been married since 1965. They have a son and two daughters, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Austin Enos Kness
Austin Enos “Brick” Kness
In the professional pest control industry, few figures loom as large as Austin Enos “Brick” Kness. This innovative janitor-turned-inventor created a product that would transform the industry and establish a century-long legacy of pest management solutions.
Kness was born in Chadwick, Ill., in 1889, the second of eight children. During his childhood, the family moved around doing farm work, finally settling near Monticello, Iowa. After completing the eighth grade, 15-year-old Kness quit school, left home and headed West. He got by as a farmhand and even as a traveling professional wrestler.
In his early 20s, Kness worked in logging camps in Washington and Oregon, becoming a barber and cutting the hair of his fellow loggers. He also labored in orchards and dairy farms, and trained in Omaha, Neb., as an automotive repairman.
As a written family history recalls, the various places Kness worked inspired him to build tools to assist him in any tasks at hand. He built “a boat powered by a vehicle; a light bulb extractor for high ceilings; a one-wheel trailer;a rural mailbox; a garden hoe…
a contour plow and harrow; a left-hand turn signaling device for an automobile, a lift box on the three-point hitch of a tractor” and many other innovations.
But by age 25, Kness was back at the family farm, settling down with his new bride, Bessie. They had three daughters and three sons, but Bessie died nine years later of influenza. Their baby was barely six weeks old, and their oldest child was 7.
To make matters worse, the farm was having a bad year in 1924 and Kness had to take a job to make ends meet. He was hired as a custodian at Audubon High School in Audubon, Iowa.
In this new position, Kness faced a persistent mouse problem. He was frustrated with the time and labor involved in setting numerous traps around the school, emptying all the full traps, cleaning up the mess and starting over again, day in and day out.
Kness fell back on his tinkering habit and engineered an ingenious device cobbled from everyday items: a square oil can, an empty Tuxedo Tobacco tin, a spring from a curtain rod and the wooden base of a crate. The first night he set his trap, he captured five mice. He was elated, as were the teachers, his friends and family. They encouraged him to take out a U.S. patent on the trap, which he was granted in 1930.
This trap could capture multiple rodents without needing to be reset — and was the first iteration of what became the Ketch-All Multiple Catch Mousetrap that is still in use today.
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