Obit of the Day
Looking at the famous, infamous, not-so-famous, and unique lives that have shuffled off this mortal coil.
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Obit of the Day: “Making Grown Men Cry”
In 1975, Larry and Jane Nance started their own business. Since Mr. Nance had worked most recently for a St. Louis-based tear gas company, they decided that the market was open to a line of personal-defense sprays. So the Security Equipment Corporation was started out of Mr. Nance’s trunk, filled with hundreds of containers of Sabre defense spray that he sold store-by-store across the St. Louis area.
Mr. Nance would handle the sales calls on the road and Mrs. Nance would do the follow-ups from home, while taking care of their four children. Although they faced set-backs (in 1982 a report by 20/20 on the negative effects of defense sprays caused sales to plummet) they remained dedicated to their product and today Security Equipment Corporation is the largest seller of pepper sprays in the world.
Sabre sprays are used in 25 countries including Canada, Denmark, Uruguay, Egypt, and Singapore. In the United States, Sabre sprays are used by the Department of Defense, Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Marshals as well as almost every major metropolitan police force. The company offers products for personal use (including a pink pepper spray canister in support of breast cancer), law enforcement (some with combined concentrations of pepper spray and tear gas), and bear sprays…yes, bear sprays.
Larry Nance died at the age of 64 from myeloma. His children now run the company which uses the slogan, “Making Grown Men Cry Since 1975.”
Note: Sabre pepper spray was not used in the now-infamous UC-Davis pepper spray incident that became a popular meme in 2011. That was BAE’s Def-Tec MK-9.
Additional source: www.sabrered.com
(Image courtesy of wolverinesssm.com)
