Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington | 2021
Lionel Alvin Stange, 1935-2020
Abstract
In March of 2020, I received the sad news that Lionel had passed away February 27. He was 84 years old. I have many wonderful memories of Lionel, so I thought I would share some of them with the entomological community in the hope you can, at least partially, appreciate him and his legacy as I do. Lionel loved collecting insects, listening to and studying classical music, and smoking cigars; however, I think he loved travel more than anything else. He visited Africa, Australia, Europe, Mexico and various areas in South America, all aimed at collecting insects, mostly antlions, his main entomological love. While in grad school at the University of California, Davis (Fig. 1), Lionel worked with Professor Stan Bailey on the control of the cynipid twig wasp of cork oak trees, of which there are many on the campus. Lionel also teamed up with Professor Al Grigarick to work on the anthidiine bees of California. He also worked on vespid wasps of the genus Zethus Fabricius with Professor Richard (Dick) Bohart. His interest in that group lasted for many years and he published a number of papers on those wasps. But antlions and Neuroptera in general were Lionel’s favorite creatures and most of his publications deal with these groups. In 1960, Frank Strong, a professor in Entomology, got his pilot training license, and thanks to him, Lionel learned to fly. He finally soloed, but a club member crashed our Piper Colt (Fig. 2) and that ended Lionel’s flying career. Thanks to Bram Willink, who had been a visitor at UC Davis in 1965, Lionel got a job at the Fundacion Miguel Lillo in Tucuman, Argentina, where Willink was the director. Life for Lionel was good in Argentina. He enjoyed eating steaks, which were a common food staple, and he told me every cut on the plate was probably less than 24 hours old. Lionel did not speak Spanish when he arrived, but within three years he had mastered it and was giving courses at the university. He began publishing papers in Spanish as early as 1968. On January 6, 1968 Lionel and Judith Lotti (a botanist at Miguel Lillo) were married. In 1969 they had a daughter, Elizabeth, and in August 1974 a son, Eric Lionel. During his time in Tucuman, Lionel had a number of visits from his friend Charles Porter and they made a number of collecting trips together in South America. In January 1976, Dick and Margaret Bohart visited Argentina and spent time with Lionel in Tucuman. Lionel and I corresponded frequently well into the 1970s. He hoped I would get a job in South America, so we could continue our joint collecting adventures, but this was not to be.