Stoy Hedges loves bugs. Even as a child he knew he wanted to work with insects. In fact, one of his earliest memories is trying to catch as many bees as he could in a jar. Running around with the jar, he fell, and the jar broke and cut his hand. “I was more upset at the bees’ getting away that I was about being cut,” he laughs.
Today, in his office at Terminix International, Hedges, 38, is still surrounded by bugs. There are several insect collections in domed glass jars around his office — collections he made himself — as well as a few live tarantulas, a scorpion and a black widow spider. His office also contains one of the best historical libraries of books on the topic of pest control that exists anywhere in the industry. Included in the collection is an original, First Edition of the Mallis Handbook of Pest Control, published in 1945, along with many other early reference books on pest control from the late 19th and early 20th century.
A RESPECT FOR INSECTS. Looking around his office, you get the idea that Hedges truly treasures the insects of the world — an unusual attitude for someone whose job it is to teach others to control them. But in fact, what Hedges most enjoys is helping others learn and grow in the industry, whether it’s by accompanying technicians on their service calls, or by transferring his knowledge of pest control to the written page. And with close to 20 years of experience in the industry, Hedges still learns something new each time he goes out into the field.
“Bugs are dynamic creatures that do different things and they act in similar ways,” he says, “but you’ll find them in weird situations and doing weird things, and that’s how you learn. I’ve been able to translate some of that into the publications in the industry.”
And he certainly has. In the past 12 years, Hedges has written 100 articles for PCT magazine and its sister publication, Service Technician magazine, in addition to five books. (Hedges 100th article, “‘I’ve Got This Customer,’” appears in this issue on page 20.) He also wrote the popular Field Guide for the Management of Structure-Infesting Ants (which is currently being revised under Hedges’ direction) and also oversaw the production, as editorial director, of the Eighth Edition of the Mallis Handbook of Pest Control, published earlier this year. All of this writing is, of course, in addition to his technical and training work at Terminix, which also includes a lot of writing.
Like many leaders in the industry, Hedges got his start as a pest control technician, although he says he never intended to pursue a career in structural pest control. He attended college at Purdue University, majoring in entomology, and planning to work toward a doctoral degree. Then, in the summer before his junior year, Hedges took a job working as a technician for Mooresville Pest Control, in Hedges’ hometown of Mooresville, Ind. “I really enjoyed it,” Hedges says of the experience. George Mountain, the owner of Mooresville Pest Control, saw Hedges’ interest in the industry grow. “I believe the thing that really sparked his enthusiasm was seeing what the knowledge he gained from the classroom did for him,” Mountain said. “He saw what the industry was really like. He could foster his interest in entomology and biology and combine that with a profession he would make money at.”
The following summer, Hedges returned to work at Mooresville. But his work there was cut short by an unexpected health emergency: A month into the summer, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of testicular cancer.
Upon noticing symptoms of a tumor, Hedges didn’t waste any time in getting to a physician. The first physician told him there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately, Hedges was skeptical. “I didn’t believe the first doctor I saw, and went to see a second doctor,” Hedges said. “That doctor put me in the hospital.” The very next day, Hedges’ tumor was removed, and it proved to be malignant. Shortly after that, Hedges’ underwent exploratory surgery to determine if the cancer had spread.
Luckily, all of the tissue samples taken proved to be free of cancer. The six months of chemotherapy that followed proved to be the most difficult part of the ordeal. “I was going in every three weeks my senior year to get chemotherapy treatments,” recalls Hedges, “and I’d be out sick for four days.” Fortunately, many of Hedges’ professors allowed him to make up the tests and assignments he missed. “I still managed to finish my degree on time,” he says.
Gary Bennett, the director of the entomology program at Purdue, recalls that Hedges’ illness never seemed to get in the way of his studies. “Other than the fact that he was bald, I don’t think anyone would have known that he had a problem because he was always positive and upbeat about things,” Bennett said. “Stoy was tenacious and he wasn’t going to let his health problem get him down, so it was really easy to work with him and help him finish on schedule.”
A VARIETY OF EXPERIENCES. Hedges graduated from Purdue in 1981, and his first job out of college was with the Terminix branch in Bloomington, Ind. He got the job as a sales representative through a friend from Purdue, Jeff Hill, who worked for the company.
“I spent about six months there and found that sales really wasn’t my forte,” says Hedges. His friend George Mountain then told him about an opportunity with Pest Control Services of Indianapolis, as a technician and supervisor. The company, which was founded by Dr. Lee Truman, is now owned by Dan and Bonnie Everts. “Pest Control Services had a lot of widely varying accounts,” recalls Hedges, “from grain elevators and food processing plants to factories and homes. I managed to gain a tremendous amount of experience.”
Still, Hedges says, he was beginning to become a little impatient and disillusioned with the field of pest control. He wasn’t making the kind of salary he felt he should with an entomology degree, and he even considered going back to school. But then Jeff Hill, who had been working as the entomologist for Big State Pest Control in Houston, told Hedges he would be moving to Austin, and that his position was now open. “I flew down and interviewed with them, and they hired me that day,” Hedges recalls.
Working for Big State Pest Control, a several-million-dollar operation, was an important experience in Hedges’ career. The Houston area, with its wide range of pests, is a virtual “hotbed” of pest control problems, and therefore was a valuable experience for Hedges. As entomologist, sanitarian and quality control inspector for Big State, he gained experience in all types of accounts and with all sorts of pest problems, and he also began training others. In the beginning, he recalls, he lacked confidence.
“In my first training session I was so nervous, I didn’t realize that I sat with my elbow on the podium with my hand in front of my mouth and nobody could understand what I was saying,” said Hedges. Over time, as he fielded more and more questions, Hedges became a quite confident speaker.
After two years at Big State, Hedges was ready to move on. He learned of a management position with ChemLawn Pest Free in Atlanta and was hired. There, Hedges was responsible for training, improving service and reducing chemical usage. While working in Atlanta, Hedges also met his wife, Kathryn. In 1987 the company was purchased by Ecolab, and Hedges was transferred to Columbus, Ohio.
One of Hedges’ biggest career opportunities came in 1988, when his job at Chem-Lawn Pest Free was eliminated. The company could no longer support a technical management position. “I kind of got laid off in a sense but it wasn’t a bad thing,” Hedges says, “because two weeks later I had a job with a company that was far larger and had more responsibility.”
Hedges secured a job as director of technical services with Waste Management in Oak Brook, Ill. Then in late 1990, Waste Management and ServiceMaster formed a new entity called ServiceMaster Consumer Services. Waste Management’s pest control operations were folded into Terminix, and Hedges was hired into his current position. Ironically, the following year, Ecolab sold ChemLawn to Service-Master, and it was absorbed into the company’s TruGreen operations.
A CAREER COMES FULL-CIRCLE. “My story is the biggest reason you should never burn your bridges in such a small industry,” says Hedges, contemplating the positions he has held. And, interestingly enough, the first pest control company that Waste Management purchased in 1987 was Big State Pest Control of Houston, Hedges points out.
At Terminix, the largest pest control company in the world, Hedges is responsible for providing training and technical information to all Terminix employees, including those in franchised operations. That includes close to 600 service centers in 11 countries. And a big part of Hedges’ job has involved the writing and production of training programs. “When I first got here I spent the first couple years developing and changing their basic training program.” The program includes five volumes and three workbooks. He also writes two to three new training programs each month, something he had done for the past five years. And currently, he is writing a termite training program, with the help of his counterpart at Terminix, John Chapman, who handles termite control. The training manuals are important to the company which services well over one million customers with close to 4000 general pest control technicians.
Outside of Terminix, Hedges has also dedicated much of his time to writing for the industry. And his writing through the years has become a wealth of information for service professionals throughout the industry. Hedges began writing for Pest Control Technology in 1985, after sending in a few letters to the editor and one short story, “The Hidden Enemy,” written from a cockroach’s point of view. That story was published in June of 1985. After submitting the story, PCT publisher Dan Moreland wrote to Hedges, asking him if he’d be interested in writing articles on a regular basis. Since then Hedges has become an important contributor to PCT.
“He’s produced more editorial material for the industry than anyone else in the past five or six years,” points out Dan Moreland, publisher of PCT. “A lot of people in the industry have technical ability, but very few have the ability to write and the ability to communicate that information in a meaningful way to all levels of the market. There are only a handful of people like that in the industry and he’s one of them.”
Harry Katz, a longtime mentor and friend of Hedges, compares him to industry pioneer Arnold Mallis, who was also a close friend of Katz’s. “I consider him to be one of a rare, rare breed of people,” says Katz. “He does the work three people would do; the production, the many articles, the books he’s written. He’s got the experience and he’s has a wonderful way of explaining things.”
But considering all the writing he has done outside his work at Terminix, Hedges has published far more internally at Terminix. Charles Hromada, the recently retired senior vice president of technical services for Terminix, appointed Hedges to his current position in 1990. He points out that Hedges has been an important asset to Terminix over the years.
“Stoy is highly knowledgeable as to the entomological background of the pests we deal with,” said Hromada. “And he’s a great writer and has done a wonderful job in updating the manuals and he continues to modernize them as we go along.” Hedges too, is proud of his achievements, and has only one small regret: not getting his doctorate in entomology. But, he admits, he has a good explanation.
“When I had cancer in 1980, who knows how long you’re going to live,” he said. “At that point I decided I wanted to get out in the world and do something. I’d been in school all my life.” And contemplating his career since college, Hedges says, the decisions he made turned out to be the right ones. “At the point in my life that I needed to make a change, the opportunities have come up for me to make that change and for the right reasons.”
Hedges was declared cured of the cancer in 1986. He didn’t know it at the time, but he had been treated by the best doctors in the world for his condition. Today, Indiana University Medical Center is renowned for its work against testicular cancer. But in addition to terrific medical treatment, Hedges also had a winning mental attitude which likely also played an important role in his beating cancer, and in his incredibly productive career since. “I just decided that I knew I was going to get through it,” Hedges says. “I leaned on my faith and things have worked out.”
And it’s just that positive, unflinching attitude that has made Hedges a leader in the pest control industry. Over the years, many have and will continue to turn to him for advice, information and, of course, motivation. His serious interest in pests doesn’t hurt either.
“I’VE GOT THIS CUSTOMER....” AND OTHER INTERESTING PEST CONTROL TALES |
| By Stoy Hedges |
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from a short story Hedges recently wrote about some of his more interesting experiences in the pest control industry. 
My structural pest control career began on Monday, May 21, 1979. I had completed my second year of entomology at Purdue University and never thought about pest control as a career option. But a friend in my Indiana hometown told me that Mooresville Pest control was looking for someone for summer work. I called George Mountain, the owner, and though he hadn’t been looking for anyone, he hired me anyway. In the way that this industry is family oriented, George has since become like a second father to me; his son, Kim, is one of my closest friends and a brother; and the Mountain family has become my extended family. I spent that first summer primarily as a termite technician. My first day in pest control was spent drilling a hollow block crawl for a termite treatment. I still drive by the home every time I visit my hometown. After that first summer, I was hooked and altered my curriculum at Purdue to include both the standard entomology courses and those for urban and industrial entomology. All of the positions I have held since my graduation in 1981 have provided a steady diet of lessons learned. This article is the 100th I have authored for PCT and Service Technician. What follows is a compilation of some of the interesting events and observations of my 18 years in pest control. I assume that everyone who has worked for any length of time in this industry has similar tales. Many of my conversations with fellow pest management professionals begin with the statement “I’ve got this customer,” as everyone has had a customer with a difficult-to-control pest problem. Co-workers at my office continually bring pests in to be identified and seek guidance about what to do. It is flattering that people think I will have answers to these problems. In most cases, I provide suggestions about where to look for the sources of those infestations and advice about control. Most of the time I never get to hear if what I suggested worked, but I am gratified when people call me back to tell that my advice was right on target. Here is an example. A call from a Terminix specialist concerned an office building with a severe mouse problem. The customer would permit no permanent stations or traps in the building. I suggested putting a large number of traps out at night and retrieving them the next morning. The process was to be repeated until the infestation was eliminated. When asked to suggest what to put on the snap traps, I mentioned that malt-flavored cat hairball remover was an excellent mouse attractant. I had to move the phone away from my ear due to the loud laughter on the other end. But I convinced the technical specialist to try it. A couple of weeks later, she called back to say the hairball remover really worked. By the way, I didn’t come up with this idea myself. A service technician taught it to me. Not all of my advice or days go so well. On one trip with a branch manager to a home with a wood-boring beetle problem, I really embarrassed myself with the customer. The beetles were emerging from the trunks of 12-foot tall trees in the atrium of the home. After examining the evidence, I suggested to the customer that the trees could not be fumigated because it would kill them. She looked at this well-educated entomologist with amazement and informed me that the trees were not alive; that the trunks were dead wood but the vegetation was plastic. I can’t recall how I talked my way out of that one, but in my defense, the vegetation was 12 feet above the floor and the trunks were planted in soil and surrounded by numerous live plants. Later that day it got worse when I slipped on a pile of dog poop on a deck and nearly broke my ankle. I have seldom heard laughter as loud as that bursting from the branch manager’s mouth that day. While completing a termite reinspection one day, the customer accompanied me around the outside. She was probably in her fifties, and I was a young 23-year-old. As I turned over a landscape timber to check for termites, I instead uncovered a nest of yellowjackets. As an entomologist, I recognize the significance of the situation: yellowjackets tend to get indignant when disturbed. The poor customer had no idea why I yelled loudly and made like Carl Lewis for the street. I left that poor lady standing there to face a mass of angry wasps! Fortunately and miraculously, she didn’t get stung, although she was about five seconds behind me. I should have grabbed her arm to drag her out of the way, but sometimes personal survival overrides propriety. By some I am considered an expert on ants although I would describe myself as an ardent observer of ant behavior. I was working with a service professional in treating a lawn for fire ants. I, of all people, should know that fire ants have subterranean tunnels radiating out from the ground. As I treated one mound, unbeknownst to me, fire ants crawled from one of these tunnels and up my legs. Incredibly, these ants did not begin stinging me until five minutes later when we were driving down the road. My companion laughed her head off when we had to stop on a busy street while I spent five minutes picking several dozen ants off my legs. Another situation indicates how even customers can get caught in embarrassing situations. Working very early one morning servicing a fast food restaurant, I accidentally scared the socks off the store’s manager. I had crawled halfway under a table to reach a pile of sandwich wrappers and as I pulled on them, a mouse burst from the pile and ran up my I arm. I thought it had run under my sleeve into my shirt. I guess I yelled loudly as I flopped around a few times to get myself out from under the table. At the time this happened, the manager was stepping over my legs. My fellow service professional said the manager jumped at least two feet off the floor and turned white as a sheet. My partner said he initially thought I had been electrocuted. A few minutes afterward, the manager went home — not wanting to see what would happen next. I guess timing is everything. 
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