Class of 2018

Dr. Robert “Butterfly Bob” Snetsinger was 2018’s posthumous Hall of Fame inductee. He retired in 1999 as Professor Emeritus in the Department of Entomology for Pennylvania State University, State College, Pa., after a 38-year career there. During his academic career, he mentored many students and directed 40 theses. In 1996, he was co-recipient of the Provost’s Collaborative Innovations Special Recognition Program for teaching.

Dr. Robert Snetsinger was a lot of things to a lot of people. To some, he was “Butterfly Bob,” a mantle he was proud to wear as a result of his tireless work instituting and maintaining the Snetsinger Butterfly Garden, which he and his wife, Dr. Wendy Snetsinger, created in honor of their daughter Clare, whom they lost to cancer in 1989. The original 3-acre garden was instituted in 1996 at the Tom Tudek Memorial Park in State College, Pa., and satellite gardens have been established at more than 30 schools, churches and other public places.
To his community of Patton Township, Pa., he was just Bob, serving on the township’s planning commission from 1964-77, a regional planning commission from 1970-77, and serving as Patton Township Supervisor in 1978.

To countless Penn State students and academic colleagues, he was Dr. Bob, a specialist in pest insects and, from 1969-98, part of a four-person interdisciplinary team that developed the Mushroom Test Demonstration Facility at the university. Wendy notes that because the four researchers were from different departments, they never received recognition for the impact their work had on improving mushroom farming and its battle against crop-damaging arthropod pests.

But Bob also was interested in spreading the word about urban pest control. He ran the Pest Control Short Course for several years, and when he took a sabbatical in Puerto Rico in 1983 to study termites, he recruited several local students to attend Penn State to receive their entomology doctoral degrees. In 1993, he created and co-chaired the first Great Insect Fair on campus, which still goes on today and attracts thousands of people annually. He retired in 1999, after a 38-year career with the university. By then, he had directed 40 theses and was the 1996 co-recipient of the Provost’s Collaborative Innovations Special Recognition Program for teaching.

To pest management professionals (PMPs), he was not only an advocate, but the author of what many in the industry consider to be the seminal book on the history of the industry, The Ratcatcher’s Child. Published in 1983, it chronicles the beginnings of the “ratcatcher” industry in Europe in medieval times, working its way to the 20th century and how the giants of the industry got their starts.

To his two daughters, he was “Dad” — and to Wendy, he was the love of her life.

“I met him as a freshman in college in 1957 at the University of Illinois, at a Young Democrats meeting,” recalls Wendy. “He was an officer and greeted me just to get my contact information. I had put down my age as 17-and-three-quarters, and he got a kick out of that accuracy. He called me soon after to make a poster for them, and it took off from there.” When Wendy later received her own doctorate in instructional systems, she had him accompany her onstage as a mentor.

Three years later, after he received his doctorate, the two were married and Wendy transferred to Penn State. Until his death at age 88 in 2016, Wendy notes that pest control was a main passion of his.

“He had a curious mind about a lot of stuff, but history was a specialty,” she says, noting that the germ of The Ratcatcher’s Child came after he wrote a book on just the history of entomology in Pennsylvania. He also created a 300-page compilation of his own family’s genealogy, which he was able to trace back to the second boat that arrived in the U.S. after the Mayflower. He had grown up in Lake County, Ill., on a dairy farm at a time when his family was transitioning from using a horse and plow to a tractor. Knowing both the historical and modern sides of farming, plus being very involved in 4H, likely shaped his interest in education, history and outreach throughout his long career, Wendy says.
While Wendy was proud of Bob’s devotion to spreading the word about ratcatchers and their history, she does admit that she wasn’t a fan of the “basket of taxidermized rats he carried when he dressed up in a ratcatcher costume for presentations.

“That was a little disgusting. The basket was relegated to the basement so no one would see it,” she says with a laugh. “But when he got into butterflies, he had a cape made and that was fun — kids just loved him when he was Butterfly Bob.”

He also tried to provide as many opportunities for students as he could, especially those in inner cities, Wendy recalls. In addition to those he worked with in Puerto Rico, once back in Pennsylvania he offered outreach programs to local high schools, talking about how pest control could serve as a career. He also supervised several instances where low-income homeowners could get free pest control service as a way to give entomology students field experience.
Wendy says she believes he would have been thrilled to receive the honor of being a PMP Hall of Fame inductee. “It’s just so nice,” she says. “He deserves recognition in so many ways, it was certainly well earned.”