  In this talk I review the history of models of strong decays, from the
original model through applications to charmonium, light and charmed mesons,
glueballs and hybrids. Our current rather limited understanding of the QCD
mechanism of strong decays is stressed. Regarding current and future
applications of strong decay models, we note that in certain channels the very
strong coupling predicted between |qqbar> basis states and the two-meson
continuum may lead to strongly mixed states and perhaps molecular two-meson
bound states. The relevance to the D_{sJ}*(2317) is discussed.
