BRYAN — Friends and colleagues use the words “legend,” “pioneer” and “modest” to describe Herbert Arthur Dean, a retired Texas AgriLife Research entomologist from the Rio Grande Valley who passed away recently in Bryan.
Funeral services were held Wednesday in Pearland for Dean, 90, who died Sunday of long-term diabetes, according to family members.
“He was an early expert in citrus insects and their insecticides, but that’s probably not what he’ll most be remembered for,” said Dr. Ben Villalon, a friend and former colleague of Dean at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, now known as Texas AgriLife Research.
“He’ll most likely be remembered for pioneering the biological control of insect pests without the use of insecticides,” Villalon said. “He proved that bio-control could work. He had an astounding success in controlling an insect that in the 1950s was decimating lawns and pastures in South Texas, including the King Ranch.”
Losses were mounting into the millions and entire industries, including the cattle industry, were at risk, Villalon recalled.
“Herb imported a wasp from India and within a year it had established itself at the King Ranch and eventually controlled populations of Rhodegrass scale.”
The parasitic wasp from India, Neodusmetia N. sangwani, continues to keep the pest in check to this day, said Dr. Jose Amador, another of Dean’s colleagues and the former director of the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Weslaco.
“Herb was legendary throughout the agricultural research circles of the world,” Amador said. “And he was the sweetest, kindest gentleman you’d ever want to meet.”
At the time of his retirement in 1981, Dean’s contemporaries said the economic impact of his work on Rhodegrass scale would easily reach into the billions of dollars.
“Herb has been a real pioneer in biological control,” said Dr. Chan C. Connolly, Dean’s supervisor. “He was at least 20 years ahead of his time in telling us that chemicals can’t be sprayed indiscriminately on one insect without laying yourself open for trouble from others. There’s no perfect chemical, and Herb Dean realized it before many others.”
During his 35-year career, Dean had many similar successes in managing citrus pests. He authored or co-authored 95 scientific papers, mostly on ground-breaking citrus insect control research and methods still used today.
In 1970, he presented the position paper for citrus in a national meeting of scientists that set the stage for the worldwide use of integrated pest management strategies.
And in 1987 he was awarded the prestigious Arthur T. Potts award by his peers for his “Pioneering Research in Biological Control and Integrated Pest Management on Citrus in the Valley.” In 2006, he was also honored with an endowed entomology scholarship at Texas A&M.
“I’d been interested in insects since I was a child,” Dean said during an interview in 2005 at the age of 87. “In fact, I’d often carry my insect collection around with me. And I liked living here in the Rio Grande Valley because there are more insects in South Texas than in any other part of the state.”
Dean moved with his parents to the Valley in 1925 from East Texas at the age of seven, when his father was named distributor of Gulf Oil products in McAllen. The Eagle Scout graduated from McAllen High School in 1936, then attended Edinburg Junior College (now the University of Texas-Pan American) for a year.
Dean attended Texas A&M for another year before returning to McAllen to work at the Grisham Ice Cream plant to earn money toward finishing his bachelor’s degree at Texas A&M. He eventually earned his master’s in entomology.
In 1941 he joined the military and saw harrowing action in the Pacific. He was part of the first amphibious landings at Guadalcanal. In a single day near Okinawa, 154 Japanese suicide bombers dove at the minesweeper carrying Dean and his comrades. The event was written up in a Readers Digest article: “The Little Ship That Caught Hell.” As the war and his Navy career ended, Dean met and fell in love with his wife-to-be of 63 years, Betty Laughlin, who survives him. “When the preacher asked if anybody objected to us getting married, the curtains of the room we were in got caught up in a nearby fan,” Dean remembered. “Made a helluva racket.”
Until illness stopped him, Dean spent his retirement making picture frames and other objects from non-commercial wood collected on travels or sent to him by friends all over the world. Asked what he would do differently, either professionally or personally, if he had his life to live over again, an ailing Dean whispered, “Not a thing.”
“Herb was a giant in our industry,” said Villalon, a retired and renowned pepper breeder who worked for a time with Dean in the fungal control of citrus pests.
“He was environmentally green before being green was cool,” Villalon joked. “And he was modest. He was never one to toot his own horn. They don’t make ‘em like Herb Dean anymore.”
In 2005, Dean and is wife moved from their home in Weslaco to an apartment in Bryan to be closer to their sons, Allen and Barry, and their families, who also survive him.