Kenneth Aldred Spencer was a Kansascoal mine owner who transformed a government surplus factory into the world's biggest ammonium nitrate producer. Money from his and his wife's estate was donated to philanthropies throughout Kansas. Spencer was born in Columbus, Kansas but grew up in Pittsburg, Kansas. Spencer graduated from the University of Kansas in 1926, majoring in engineering and geology and went into his father's business of Pittsburg & Midway Coal Company in Pittsburg, Kansas. Spencer moved to the Kansas City area in 1939 to establish offices for his companies. As a trained geologist and engineer Spencer patented processes for extracting by-products from coal which led to the establishment of the Mineral Products Company of Pittsburg. In 1941 the War Department contacted him about operating a weapons-gradeammonia nitrate plant near Crestline, Kansas that would become the Jayhawk Ordnance Works. He would say later: He set up the Military Chemical Works, Inc. as a subsidiary of Pittsburg & Midway with himself as president and built the plant by 1943 with it producing 14,500 tons a month. U.S. ordnance facilities were placed in the mid-U.S. during World War II. Other plants to be built and owned by others included the Kansas Ordnance Plant at Parsons, Kansas, the Sunflower Ordnance Plant at De Soto, Kansas, the Ozark Ordnance Plant at El Dorado, Arkansas. After the war with help from J.H. Whitney & Company he entered into a lease with an option to buy the plant to use the ammonia nitrate as fertilizer under the new name of Spencer Chemical. He succeeded his father as head of the Pittsburg & Midway. It was so successful that he was able to endow a foundation by 1949. Spencer would also buy plants in Calumet City, Illinois; Henderson, Kentucky; Vicksburg, Mississippi; Fort Worth, Texas and Orange, Texas. Spencer was one of the nine original founders of MRIGlobal in 1944. Its first mission was finding peaceful uses of ammonium nitrate. He would be chairman of the board of trustees from 1954 to 1957. Spencer also donated money for the Kenneth A. Spencer Laboratories Building and the Spencer Auditorium at MRIGlobal.
Helen (wife)
Helen Elizabeth Foresman was born in Joplin, Missouri and grew up in Amarillo, Texas and spent high school in Pittsburg, Kansas where she married Kenneth Spencer on January 6, 1927. They moved to Kansas City, Missouri in 1940. Following the success of the Spencer Chemical Company, they formed the Spencer Foundation in 1949. When Kenneth died in 1960, she liquidated the companies by selling Spencer to Gulf Oil. She kept their various oil and gas leases in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. In 1972 she decided to finally sell the oil and gas leases to Rex D. Archer, an employee that Kenneth hired in 1955 to find these leases. Such loyalty, a Spencer family trait, was reflected in Helen's further works as head of the Kenneth A. and Helen F. Spencer Foundation until her death in 1982. The Spencer Chemical Corporation name disappeared following its purchase by the Pittsburg and Midway Company, which continued to operate under that name until its eventual owner Chevron formally consolidated its mining operations under the Chevron Mining name.
