By Andrew Meacham, Times Staff Writer
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Times Staff Writer
ST. PETERSBURG — H. Browning Spence loved to read to his children every day, glasses perched on his nose, enunciating Dr. Seuss in a lilting, professorial cadence. He paused to ponder the wordplay over sneedles or wockets or sala-ma-gooxes.
When his children were old enough, Mr. Spence encouraged them to read stories about dogs or rabbits or trucks or trains. In this way he introduced them to a wider world.
Peers at the Juvenile Welfare Board knew the adult side of the sharply dressed deputy director. He held a Ph.D in educational administration, and seemed to know by heart an interconnected world of county and state agencies, nonprofit organizations, needy people and the grants available to help them.
Parents of young soccer or softball or baseball players also knew Dr. Spence, a regular presence in the bleachers or coaching softball. On vacations, he took his family for walks on beaches or climbing mountains, stopping every so often to inhale the view.
One pang, steady as a toothache, persisted through an otherwise rich life: the fact that thousands of Tampa Bay-area children could not attain what his son and daughter would attain in their lives, or enjoy what they enjoyed.
Dr. Spence, a genial man who over 23 years used his research skills to help underprivileged children, died Nov. 27, of melanoma. He was 64. In addition to his work at the JWB, Dr. Spence in 2009 was elected president of the National Association of Planning Councils.
"There is not anybody at the Juvenile Welfare Board who has been here any length of time who does not feel his mark," said Gay Lancaster, the JWB's executive director.
Emory Ivory, a senior vice president of the United Way of Tampa Bay, described Dr. Spence as "a brilliant guy who approached his work with a lot of heart."
"He forged partnerships, not just in Pinellas County but across the bridge in Hillsborough County," Ivory said.
Dr. Spence joined the JWB in 1986 as director of community planning and development. He asked questions — hundreds of them — which fired his research and dissolved into data. As he rose to senior manager of planning and research, he improved the JWB's database on Pinellas County's neediest residents.
"He was a very intellectual person, but he had a gentleness and sense of humor that I think made people feel very comfortable in discussing their ideas," said Guy Cooley, the executive director of Coordinated Child Care, which helps low-income families afford day care.
Lisa Jackson, a vice president of grant development for the nonprofit Family Resources, said she and her peers used Dr. Spence like a quiz-show lifeline.
"We used to say, 'Call Browning!'" Jackson recalled.
In his quest to improve the lives of homeless children, troubled teenagers and single mothers, Dr. Spence sometimes encountered resistance.
In the late 1980s, neighbors kicked Pinellas Village, a proposed residence for single parents, out of Pinellas Park.
No matter — he helped reestablish the home in Largo, where it stands today.
Neighbors did manage to kill his plans for a health clinic at Gibbs High School that would address teenage pregnancy. He responded by securing a grant for training through Brandeis University, which showed social workers ways to reduce dropout rates among teen parents.
Born in Maryland in an Army family, he grew up in Greece, Japan and the United States. After graduating from Towson State College in Maryland, he taught junior-high geography and physical education.
"He loved teaching, but saw so many things children needed that a teacher could not provide," said Mary Catherine Spence, his wife of 41 years. "That's kind of what sent him back on a track to human services planning."
He returned to school, and earned at doctorate at Pennsylvania State University. He served as a county youth services planner, then was promoted to human services manager before coming to the JWB. Over the years, he treated co-workers to his famous cheesecakes.
He told his wife the work suited him, long before JWB made him its deputy executive director in 2007.
Christine Marie Davis, Dr. Spence's daughter, said her father influenced her own priorities at a small nonprofit agency in Chicago, where she teaches children with disabilities.
Davis, 34, said her father taught her "that everybody matters, everybody is important, and that everybody should have the same opportunities as we did."
Andrew Meacham can be reached at (727) 892-2248 or ameacham@sptimes.com.