When I was young I had a rather grim world view, which I developed while growing up in the impoverished state of Alabama during the Great Depression and World War II. Having decided to be an entomologist at any cost, I was under the impression that it was necessary to become an expert on a particular group of insects, and as soon as possible. So at the age of 16, after a passionate dalliance with butterflies, I turned to ants. It was a fortunate choice. Ants are among the most ubiquitous of all insects, they are social, and they are easy to culture and study in the laboratory. By the age of 17, as a freshman at the University of Alabama, I was already maintaining a colony of army ants Neivamyrmex nigrescens in the laboratory, where I made my first publishable observations on one of their symbionts, a minute limulodid beetle in the genus Paralimulodes.

This was easy! This was fun! Soon, as a senior at the University of Alabama, I took time off to work for the first time as a professional entomologist. By a remarkable stroke of luck, I had been one of the first two persons to record the arrival of the red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta in the United States. That was the summer of 1942, I was 13, and the nest I found was fortuitously next to our house, located several blocks from the docks at Mobile, Alabama.