Denver Post employees always knew John Spencer as the smiling, ever-friendly security guard who remembered everyone’s name and cared about how they were.
Spencer, 78, had returned May 27 from Omaha where he’d gone for a family funeral. He was watching television and folding clothes the next day at his Federal Heights home when he died, said his son, Gary Spencer, of Spanish Fort, Ala.
A funeral Mass will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday at Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, 2361 E. 78th Ave. in Denver.
Spencer was short and slight, but he never backed away from a challenge.
A purse snatcher once ran into the Post building at 15th and California streets trying to elude the law. “Like a flash” Spencer took after the guy, recalled Glen Braswell, manager of administrative services. He chased the suspect five floors and slammed him into a wall face first, holding him until police arrived.
“He was quite a bit bigger than John,” said Braswell, but John “didn’t put up with a lot of crap.”
Spencer was a meticulous dresser, always in gray slacks, a blue blazer, hair neatly trimmed and rarely agitated.
“He was a stickler for details – always did his job right,” said Ron Michaels, a janitor for the printing plant.
Joyce Anderson praised Spencer’s dependability. “He’s telling St. Peter right now, ‘Take a break. I’ll handle the gate,”‘ said Anderson, senior administrative assistant in the Post newsroom.
Friends said Spencer kept working beyond retirement age “because he liked us. We were his family,” said Johnny Montanio, who works in maintenance at the production plant.
Spencer loved to fish and was an avid coupon-clipper. He’d chase around town to save money on groceries, of which he was always overstocked, said Gary Spencer. “He’d step over a dollar to save a nickel.”
Howard John Spencer was born July 3, 1927, in Altoona, Pa.
He served 11 years with the U.S. Army and then got into sheriff’s work in Omaha and Colorado.
He married Barbara Stokilo, and they had five children. They divorced, and he later married Ethel Tolvo, who also was a guard at The Post. They had been married 27 years when she died in 2004.
In addition to his son, Spencer is survived by two more sons, John H. Spencer of Tucson and Gordon Spencer of Littleton; two daughters, Jennifer Spencer of Denver and Caroline Dowling of Aurora; 10 grandchildren; and three great- grandchildren.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
