Three unforgettable mentors shoved me off into a vocation of natural history. Dr. Neil Douglas, Dr. R. Dale Thomas, and the late Dr. Tom Kee, biology professors at what was then known as Northeast Louisiana University, first had to teach me how much I didn’t know before they could inject me with an education proper. Their pedagogy emphasized taxonomy, be it of freshwater darters, adder’s tongue ferns, or flycatchers, and the “survival of the fittest” theory applied as well to their students. I can’t thank them enough
