Profile of a Family Values Candidate of the Republican Party for United States House of Representatives, 5th District South Carolina

• Date and Place of Birth: 12-31-43, Pittsburgh, PA
• Hometown: Gaffney, South Carolina
• Religion: Catholic • Marital Status: Single

• Profession: Associate Professor and Chair of the Physical Education and Athletic Training Department at Limestone College, Gaffney, South Carolina. Thirty years of experience as a teacher and coach in schools and colleges. Began teaching career at an American Indian school. Has taught at Atlanta University, a historically black institution of higher learning, as well as at Emory University, Rice University and UNLV. Author of several articles on ethics in society

• Education:
  • B.S in Education, Slippery Rock State College, 1966
  • M.S. in Library Science. Clarion University, 1981
  • Ph.D. in Library Science, Florida State University, 1985
  • Ph.D. in Physical Education, Florida State University, 1991

• Honors:
  • Member of “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in American Education.”
  • Omicron Delta Kappa, National Leadership Honor Society
  • Beta Phi Mu, International Honor Society

• Business: As a Kmart unit manager, Spencer’s department led all Kmarts throughout the United States in retail sales in 1973-74

• Military: Earned a passing score on all phases of the U.S. Air Force Officer’s Candidacy Exam, but a football injury precluded service. Three years experience as a recruiter for the United States Army Reserves

• Civic:
  • Special Olympics, coordinator and fund-raiser
  • Knights of Columbus, Patriotic Degree and Recruitment Director
  • Southeastern Cherokee Federation, member - Reading is Fundamental, volunteer elementary school reader
  • Prior Civic Experience
    • Scoutmaster, Boy Scouts of America
    • Fund raiser, St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital

Biography

Albert’s maternal grandparents, Karol Kielbas and Anna Zolna, came to the United States from Poland at the start of the 20th Century. They were married on the Fourth of July. Grandfather Charlie worked as a coal miner in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, initially earning only 25 cents a day. In 1912, Albert’s mother, Ann, was born, the third of four daughters. During the Depression era the family moved to Cheswick, Pennsylvania where Ann and her two older sisters helped to build the small family home, which still stands today.

One of Albert’s paternal great-great-grandfathers, John Davis, was a rider in the Pony Express in the Kansas Territory, married a young woman of American Indian heritage, and served in the Civil War Between the States. His great-grandfather, Jacob Davis, moved his family from Pennsylvania to Alabama but later returned to Pennsylvania where grandmother, Eva, was born. She was the oldest in a family of five children. Albert’s paternal great-great-great grandparents moved from England and settled in Western Pennsylvania, a frontier in the early 1800s. Their son was a farmer who had to defend his family from Native Americans. His son, Chambers, was also a farmer in Kittanning, PA. Chambers had twelve children, the youngest being Frank Spencer. Frank began life as a farmer, but soon moved to the industrial mill area north of Pittsburgh. It was there that he met and married Eva and they had three sons and one daughter. The daughter died in infancy. Albert’s father, Albert C. Spencer, was born in 1916, the youngest of three brothers.

Albert’s mother, grandmothers and aunts all worked outside the home when they were younger, but were primarily homemakers. Grandfather Charlie retired at the age of 65 from the coal mines with a small pension due to the influence of the Miner’s Union. Grandfather Frank was released from his job at the mill, just days before retirement, so the company could deny his pension. Forced to keep working, he was injured and died at work at the age of 68. Albert C. Spencer followed his two brothers in receiving a college education. They were the first of Albert’s relatives to do so. His father was a teacher, grades 4-12, and was dedicated to the study of plant and animal ecology, and conservation. His first teaching job in 1941 paid only $500, and he retired from teaching forty years later with a salary of $6000.

Albert was born on New Year’s Eve. As a child, Albert learned the value of respect for family and community, and a solid work ethic. At the age of ten, he had a neighborhood lawn mowing service, helped a friend deliver newspapers, worked for a carnival, and at a local golf driving range. There is a Polish and Scandinavian tradition that a child born on the last day of the year will be blessed with physical endurance. This may be so inasmuch as he ran on the cross country team, and played semi-professional baseball while in undergraduate college at Slippery Rock State College, where he majored in physical education and geography. He also was a member of a political discussion club called the “Aphobians” (without fear). Prior to college, Albert was offered a partial mathematics scholarship to Harvard University. Knowing that his acceptance could place a financial hardship on his parents, and wanting to be a teacher and coach in order to help shape young minds, Albert chose to attend a small state college. He has never looked back on this defining decision.

Shortly after graduating from college, Albert was invited by the Pittsburgh Pirates to tryout for their baseball club. Although he didn’t make it to the big leagues, he did play in the Federation League, which several years earlier had been host to many great African-American ball players such as Satchell Paige, Josh Gibson and “Cool Papa” Bell.

Albert’s first teaching and coaching position was at an American Indian School in Arizona where he coached the boys’ basketball team to its best record in nearly 20 years. After six years of teaching and coaching in schools in Arizona and California, he furthered his education by earning two doctoral degrees at Florida State University. While at FSU, he also was an assistant coach for the Seminole’s men’s basketball team. After earning his first doctoral degree, he accepted a joint appointment at the graduate schools of Emory University and Atlanta University, a historically black institution. However, when the former terminated its program and the latter was forced to declare financial exigency, he accepted a position at Georgia Military College, where he taught physical education, coached baseball and basketball, was athletics director and library director, and a recruitment officer. When their athletics program terminated, he returned to FSU and earned a second doctoral degree, in physical education. Albert then taught in the Colleges of Education at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Albert’s parents had been in ill health and he soon became a full-time caregiver as well as a teacher. His father died while the family was in Houston, Texas. Soon after, he learned of an opening for a physical education department chair and professor at Limestone College in South Carolina. Albert accepted this position, and he and his mother moved to South Carolina, hoping that she could visit her sisters who lived in Pennsylvania. Sadly, his mother died after she had been in South Carolina for only two months. Albert always wanted to teach at a small, liberal arts college, similar to the one he had attended as a young undergraduate, and believes that the students, faculty, staff, and administration at Limestone College are superb. He thoroughly appreciates the respect for family and reverence for religion that exists in South Carolina.

At an early age, Albert learned the importance of the Golden Rule. His family fostered a love of the Bible and of church attendance. His mother’s parents came to the U.S.A. from Poland, a country that is 90% Catholic. He often listened to his grandmother speaking of the beauty of the rural countryside and the religious traditions that the oppressed people of that nation clung to in spite of frequent wars, famine and other tremendous hardships. His uncles on his father’s side were a Methodist minister and a Salvation Army Officer. Several cousins and close friends are Baptist, Presbyterian, and Moravian. The need to treat others as your self, regardless of race, culture, or creed, was impressed upon Albert’s value system initially by his parents and then via his own experiences. His mother and her sisters had often encountered derogatory name calling by their classmates because their parents were immigrants and still spoke little English. Albert describes his parents as “the most intelligent and kindest man and woman I’ve ever met.”

Albert comes from a family, who although poor to lower middle class, never gave up on the American dream of trying to make life better for themselves and, especially, for their children. It is from these roots that he offers himself as a candidate to represent traditional family values for the citizens of the 5th Congressional District of South Carolina.