Pest Control, 4 dollars? Yeah Right.



Pete and Doris' Business Cards

      Can you imagine a time where hiring Pest Control services would cost you 4-5 dollars?  ACCA can reminder, when ACCA Companies started their most expensive client was at 8 dollars and 45 cents a trip.

     ACCA Companies was founded in 1956 by Ernest (Pete) Sr. and Doris Popham.  The company started out as Pest Control and then moved into waterproofing.

     “It rained and a (pest control) customer’s basement was under water, so Pete wanted to help them out by fixing their basement,” says Doris Popham on how they got into the basement waterproofing business.  Pete would do anything to help people, so he started to do more businesses and it became an out-of-house waterproofing company wearing his khaki on khaki uniform.  From the years on until 1974, ACCA Companies was run out of Pete and Doris’s home, where Doris Popham still lives today. In 1974 they bought the office that ACCA works out of today (4501 E Morgan Ave) across from Showplace Cinemas, back then it was not Showplace, it was a drive-in movie theater.

     In 1959 and 1960, Pete and Doris celebrated the birth of their 2 kids, Joseph and LaQuita.  Joe and LaQuita attended St. Bens Grade School then Reitz Memorial High School.  Joe graduated in 1977 and attending Indiana State University.  LaQuita graduated from Memorial in 1978 and then attended University of Southern Indiana playing both basketball and softball of the university. In 1981, Joe started working at ACCA in the pest control and starting to work his way to selling waterproofing.  LaQuita started in 1983 doing office work and being a pest control tech.  In 1994, Pete retired and the business was handed over to Joe and LaQuita.  The business is still running in full force today with the same principles as they were when Pete started the company.

More Fun Facts

     Joe and his wife, Mary, were blessed with their two kids in 1988 and 1990.  When they were still too young for school, Pete did not want them to go to daycare, they spent their time at the ACCA office beign watched but their aunt, LaQuita (who they still today call Nana) and their grandma, Doris.  They old toys are still at the office today.  Rachel and Paige attended Holy Rosary then Reitz Memorial High School.  Rachel graduated in 2007 from Memorial and will graduate from Ball State in Special Education this winter.  Paige graduated from Memorial in 2009, and is studying PR and Advertising at University of Southern Indiana while working at ACCA part-time in the office.  The family business continues.