He recently delivered her eulogy. She was 94 when she died.
“I was Mother’s pastor for her last years of life,” says the tall, thin, deep-voiced, 75-year-old Spencer, a Taylortown native.
After college, he worked for the city of Detroit, Mich., finally serving as executive assistant director of Detroit’s Community and Economic Development Department before retiring to Pinehurst. He now pastors Word of Truth Christian Center in Vass.
“Mother was 19 when I was born in 1928,” Spencer says. “She was a single parent.”
Sometimes Spencer saw his father.
“I was about school age when my father would talk to my mother while she sat on our porch,” he says. “We had hedges near the walkway. I’d listen to the conversation and then get on the walkway, hoping to get a quarter or a dime. His name is on my birth certificate, but he never supported me. I’m proud of my mother, that she never made the same mistake again.”
Spencer’s grandfather died young, so his grandmother, “Nealie” Spencer, helped raise him. His mother made $17 a week as a cook in Pinehurst on “Millinery Hill.”
“The term is ‘Millionaire Hill,’ but people called it ‘Millinery Hill,’ which is Linden Road,” he says. “Mother was off work on Thursdays and part of Sundays. Until I was an adult, Mother, who married years later, spent her years trying to correct the error of her ways — of birthing me without the benefit of marriage. She protected me and bought me the best toys. Mother was not a Christian woman at that time, but she had ethics and a high temper.”
Spencer says he was very small and eating watermelon one July 4 as he sat on a crowded porch at the home of Robert Taylor — after whom Taylortown is named — when a woman almost stepped on him as she moved among the crowd.
“She was part of the Taylor family, but my mother went after her,” Spencer says. “I remember Mother’s loud voice. It didn’t come to physical contact, but I never forgot that.”
To Build a Better World
Spencer’s family belonged to Spaulding Chapel A.M.E Zion Church in Taylortown, but they also attended the town’s Galilee Baptist, Spruill Temple Church of God in Christ and House of Prayer.
He remembers two drugstores in Pinehurst.
“When black folk went into either pharmacy to buy ice cream,” he says, “clerks put napkins over their ice cream and they weren’t supposed to lick that ice cream inside the store, even though white people were eating in there. It was a way of life; we acclimated; that’s all we knew.”
Spencer completed his first two years of schooling in one year.
“Mother wouldn’t let me caddy in Pinehurst like other boys,” he says. “I had to be home at sundown.”
He graduated in 1945, at age 16, as valedictorian in a class of 11 from Taylortown’s Academy Heights High School.
“I have a copy of my graduation speech, called ‘To Build a Better World,’” he says.
College, Marriage, Detroit
“When I graduated in 1945, I went to New York,” Spencer says. “Around April every year, Pinehurst almost closed down, and the wealthy people went north to other homes. Workers would have to go work up there in the summer. My mother went several years before I graduated and established a residence there.”
Spencer worked for a summer as a “sub” in a post office but returned to Taylortown.
“I had a friend, Helen A. Alford, back home,” he says.
Spencer entered Charlotte’s Johnson C. Smith University in the fall of 1945.
“The day before going back for my senior year, I married Helen,” he says. Helen and his mother sent him money for school.
He did practice teaching at Academy Heights in Taylortown and graduated from college in 1949 (major: social science, minor: psychology). He held a few jobs but couldn’t find a job fitting his qualifications.
His mother had moved to Detroit, and in 1951, Spencer traveled there to borrow money. His mother refused to give him money to return to Taylortown.
“Stay here,” she said.
Career
“Mother gave me a map of bus routes,” Spencer says. “She gave me enough fare to look for jobs. If I got off at a wrong stop, I had to walk home.”
He found a clerking job at New York Bedspring Co. and brought his wife and child to Detroit.
“When Urban Renewal bought my company’s site, I hired on as a city welfare worker, making home calls,” he says. “Some of my clients were mental patients. Later, I obtained a concealed weapons permit.”
Spencer worked as a city housing aide, field office manager, assistant business claims specialist and assistant housing chief before becoming executive assistant director of Detroit Urban Renewal’s Community and Economic Development Department, the highest civil servant position below political appointment. At one point, 305 people worked for him.
“After 30 years with the city, I retired under Coleman A. Young,” Spencer says. “He was Detroit’s mayor for 20 years.”
Family and Faith
The Spencers, who have 13 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren, had six children. Their oldest, Brenda, died the morning after her twins, a boy and girl, were born. She was 29.
“Her husband was an alcoholic,” Spencer says. “We obtained custody of the twins. Now they’re 22 years old.”
During their first years in Detroit, the Spencers attended the Apostolic Church of God in Christ Jesus.
“My wife prayed for me for 11 years after she accepted Christ in Detroit,” he says. “I went to church some but was just religious. I’d always said I wouldn’t let anything rule me. It was largely pride. When I was 35, I made a public confession of Christ. I felt a release.”
Spencer served as a leader in several churches until retiring to Pinehurst in 1989 and starting a “mission” in Taylortown. The late Bishop Mack and Pastor Brenda Timberlake of Timberlake Ministries International of Creedmoor ordained the Spencers in 1991. The Spencers founded Word of Truth Christian Center, and after occupying several locations, the church purchased a building and property at 132 Poplar St. in Vass in 2001.
Spencer says people use natural means to try to solve spiritual problems and that many are complacent.
“Christians have the message that reconciles people to God,” he says. “My greatest concern is Jesus’ concern. His concern is to seek and to save those who are lost.”
