THE SKEETER BEATERS FOUNDATION, INC.
The Dictionary defines grassroots as “ordinary people: the ordinary people in a
community or the ordinary members of an organization, as opposed to the
leadership”.
In 2002, I wrote Skeeter Beaters, Memories of the South Pacific because I felt
strongly that it was a story that had to be told. Through contacts developed
over the years, I was told a horrifying story of malaria and its effects on
ordinary people just like you and I. I was also told a story of a small group of
men who successfully battled that disease to a standstill in just 3-1/2 years.
Uplifting? Yes, but I was left with one yet to be answered question - why is
malaria the number one killer of children in the world today if, 66 years ago, a
handful of men could do so much with so little to overcome its damaging effects?
And so I learned there truly is an important lesson to be learned from our
history. It is the link you and I share with the grassroots movement started by
the US Navy volunteer group nicknamed Skeeter Beater and the first successful
malaria control effort that they launched in the South Pacific. It was in 1942,
that 8 medical and engineering personnel embarked on an eradication and control
program in the Solomon Islands that in just three and a half years grew to over
2,500 men and women and spread to hundreds of islands all over the Pacific. At
the end of the war in 1945, it was this grassroots movement that had
successfully reduced malarial casualties in the Pacific by 98%.
Like all successful grassroots movements, the next three and a half years saw a
continuation of the Skeeter Beaters' dedication to the war on malaria when 400
men and women of the Navy’s worldwide malaria control units along with US
Public Service Health Officers who were assigned to Malaria Control in War Areas
(MCWA)formed the Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta, Georgia. It was
Joseph W. Mountin, chief of the Bureau of State Services, Public Health Service
who was instrumental in redesigning MCWA and bringing all the post war efforts
into one cohesive organization that is today known as the Center for Disease
Control. By 1949, the CDC declared that malaria no longer represented a health
threat in the continental Unites States.
Today, my goal with THE SKEETER BEATERS FOUNDATION is to give Americans of all
ages a rallying point around a real, living, historic connection to the modern
war on malaria that continues to affect over 50% of the world’s entire
population. THE SKEETER BEATERS FOUNDATION will bring closure to the sacrifice
of the original Skeeter Beaters while providing an example for a new grassroots
movement that will be as successful today as it was in 1942.
Thank you for your support!
Dennis Cline
Littleton, Colorado
