By Andrew Meacham, Times Staff Writer
Thursday, December 2, 2010
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.
Peers at the Juvenile Welfare Board knew the adult side of the sharply dressed deputy director. Dr. Spence 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.
On vacations, he took his family for walks on beaches or climbing mountains, stopping every so often to soak up 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.
He joined the JWB in 1986 as director of community planning and development.
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 re-establish the home in Largo, where it stands today.
Born in Maryland in an Army family, Dr. Spence 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.
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.
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."