Raymond J. Gagné: A Festschrift in Honor of His Contributions to Entomology and Cecidomyiid Systematics

We are pleased to dedicate this special issue of the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington in honor of Dr. Raymond J. Gagné (Fig. 1), a long-term and active member of the Society, in recognition of his many contributions to the systematics and biology of Diptera, particularly the gall midges (Cecidomyiidae). Ray was born August 27, 1935 in Meriden, Connecticut, the fourth child of Albert Joseph and Irene Marie LaQuerre Gagné. He attended the Oblate Juniorate in Bucksport, Maine, for the first three years of high school and graduated from Meriden High School in 1953. After working in local factories for a year and a half, he served in the US Army from March 1955 to February 1958 as a nuclear weapons assemblyman. While in the Army he attended night classes at a nearby college and, nearing his discharge, he applied to the University of Connecticut at Storrs. Thinking he needed to fill in all the blanks on his application, he searched through a long list of courses in the printed catalog (this was in 1957) to find PROC. ENTOMOL. SOC. WASH. 124(3), 2022, pp. 411–415