I grew up in the panhandle of Florida, Fort Walton Beach. Received an A.A. degree in 1978 from Okaloosa-Walton Community College and BA in 1981 from Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, GA. I worked as a Teacher/Naturalist in two privately funded parks, Reflection Riding in Chattanooga, TN and Landmark Park in Dothan, AL. In 1983, I started a temporary job at the Smithsonian Institution's Entomology Dept. inventorying parts of the type collection, principally the Alexander Cranefly Collection. A permanent position came open a year and a half later working in the Neuropteroid Collections and assisting Dr. Oliver S. Flint, Jr. For some unknown reason the lice and fleas were also under my supervision though not very aquatic or net-winged. During the first years of working at the Smithsonian, K. C. Emerson, though retired in Sanibel, FL by that time, would stop in occasionally to drop off material for the collection. A handsome, thin, straight, formal, gracious man. During the past 20 years of my career the Anoplura and Mallophaga Collections have grown and have become better organized. The Anoplura Collection has been organized and inventoried using Durden and Musser's 1994 Catalog. Lance has been a great friend to the collection and has helped straighten out several messy problems we had in the alcohol and slide collections. An inventory of the Anoplura general collection is available by contacting me. Lance and I have also started putting together a USNM Anoplura Type Catalog. The Mallophaga are in the process of be organized using an unpublished listing of the Price, Hellenthal, and Palma catalog. Do to other projects, I suspect I will not be able to get back to this project until well after the catalog is published. But I'm trying! Significant collections and contributors that comprise the USNM Collection are: M.A. Carriker, Jr.; K.C. Emerson; R.D. Price, CDC Atlanta collection; W.L. Jellison; Phyllis T. Johnson; R. Ward; R.L. Palma, and L. A. Durden. Though I do not do louse taxonomy, I do try to efficiently serve those who do.
