The James "Jim" Hartwell Memorial Scholarship

James Hartwell was born in 1932 in rural Pennsylvania, the son of a wheat farmer who lost two consecutive harvests to weevil infestations during the Depression. Watching his family struggle financially because of pests left a permanent mark on him. He used to tell people that bugs taught him economics before any teacher did.

After serving in the Army Corps of Engineers in Korea, where he worked on sanitation and vector control in field hospitals, Jim came home in 1955 with a clearer sense of purpose. He took a $1.75-an-hour job as a route technician for a small exterminating company in Allentown, driving a beat-up Ford pickup with a converted sprayer in the bed. He never planned to make it a career. He just needed work.

But Jim had a knack for the trade that surprised even him. He understood pest behavior the way a good farmer understands weather. He'd sit on customers' porches and ask questions for twenty minutes before he ever opened his toolbox, and his callback rate was the lowest in the company within a year. By 1962 he had bought out his old boss with a $3,000 loan from his father-in-law and renamed the business Hartwell Pest Solutions. He ran it for the next forty-three years.

What made Jim different wasn't the company he built, though it grew to seven trucks and covered three counties. It was how he treated the people who worked for him. He paid for technicians to get their state certifications when most owners made employees foot the bill themselves. He sent a young Vietnamese immigrant named Tan Nguyen to night school for his associate's degree in 1978, and Tan eventually became his operations manager. He kept a coffee can in his office labeled "Tuition Fund" and quietly helped at least a dozen technicians' kids go to community college over the years.

Jim believed that pest control was an honorable trade that didn't get the respect it deserved. He hated when people called his guys "bug men" with a sneer. He'd tell anyone who'd listen that public health in America was built on the backs of sanitarians and pest professionals, and that a good technician saved more lives in a career than most doctors. He wasn't bitter about it. He just thought the industry deserved better, and he tried to be the proof.

He served on the Pennsylvania Pest Management Association board for fifteen years, mentored at least thirty young operators who eventually started their own companies, and never once turned down a phone call from a competitor asking for advice. When he sold Hartwell Pest Solutions in 2005 to retire, he distributed nearly 20% of the sale proceeds among his longest-tenured employees as thank-you bonuses.

Jim passed away in 2019 at age 87, survived by his wife Eleanor, three children, and eight grandchildren. At his funeral, more than two hundred people from the pest control industry showed up, including former technicians who had driven in from four states.