It was an unusually warm spring day — hot and humid, with temperatures rising near 80 degrees.
The date was March 28, 1920, and the events of that Sunday still reverberate today in a 12.1-square-mile tract of land in western Lucas County.
At about 8 p.m., parishioners at Immaculate Conception Church at Raab Corners were attending Palm Sunday services when a half-mile wide tornado left a trail of destruction that killed four people and demolished most everything in its path.
As communities in Lucas County rebuilt, a dispute over schools ignited religious, political, and racial hostilities that continue to simmer in Spencer Township to this day.
“As long as you have people living together, you’re going to have some tension,” longtime Spencer trustee Michael Hood said. “But I think we manage it quite well.”
The recent political drama involving township trustees has recast a light on the complicated history of Spencer Township.
The trustee seat of Shawn Valentine, who is stationed for the military in Cuba, was illegally vacated Dec. 31, and longtime leader D. Hilarion Smith approved himself to fill the vacancy. The case now resides in the Ohio Supreme Court.
According to U.S. Census figures, the township’s population is 1,913. Only 40 percent have a high school degree. The unemployment rate is 17 percent, 11 points higher than the rate in Lucas County and 12 points higher than the national unemployment rate.
More than 22 percent of residents live below the poverty line, the most of any Lucas County township. Thirty percent of residents are black, a figure that’s steadily declined in recent decades. In 1960, 55 percent of township residents were black.
Battle over the schools
Steady wages lured blacks to the area from the deep South, Chicago, and Detroit. Many settled in the eastern half of the township — where they remain — and discovered a segregated community.
“To tell you the truth, throughout my life, I’ve been accepted by both blacks and whites,” said Pearly Wiggins, 84, who’s lived in Spencer for 64 years. “But I would say, yes, there is some racial division in the community. That’s just the way it is. It’s not only whites, blacks give people as much hell as whites. It’s human nature.”
At one time, Spencer Township encompassed the entire 21.5 square miles along the western edge of Lucas County. But in the months after the tornado, arguments erupted over plans to rebuild Sharples Consolidated School — residents in the western part wanted a bond issue to build at Sharples Corners, while the predominantly Catholic eastern half wanted the school built at Immaculate Conception Church.
With no agreement in sight, the southwestern part of Spencer created its own municipality, incorporating the village of Sharples, which was gerrymandered to exclude its opponents. The village was dissolved in 1925 and the territory was renamed Harding Township, after President Warren G. Harding.
“The people in Harding Township and Spencer Township resent each other,” said Mattie Taylor, 87, who’s worked in Spencer Township since 1976.
The Spencer-Sharples school district came into existence in 1948 when the township schools in Spencer and Harding merged. Once again, division among residents was evident.
In 1958, the mostly white western half voted to join Swanton Local Schools. But the majority black eastern half, which voted to join Springfield Local Schools, was rebuffed by the district, citing financial constraints. Lucas County schools superintendent Glenn W. Schaller said the western portion contained the area’s wealth and that it was a “predominantly white area.”
Mr. Schaller added that Spencer’s lack of taxable wealth and high black population would work against any future attempts at consolidating.
S-S — as residents called it — continued, leaving the district 90 percent black. In 1967, the Ohio General Assembly voted to allow Toledo Public Schools to annex Spencer-Sharples despite the fact that it was not geographically connected.
The school shuttered its doors in 1980, with students being sent to Rogers. Throughout its history, S-S was beset with financial issues. When it was closed, TPS said it would save the district $548,000 a year.
“I think township residents and the trustees at the time were fed a line from the Toledo Board of Education,” said Curt Lancaster, a former trustee who attended Spencer-Sharples. “They were going to do all this and all that for these poor, underprivileged people in this poor little district, and all they did was mess things up even more.”
Added Mr. Hood, a 1976 Spencer-Sharples graduate: “People are still upset about the school closing. I’m one of those people. It’s had lasting consequences. Being uprooted from your own neighborhood and then having two different schools districts — Springfield and Swanton — that weren’t willing to absorb our people into their school system, whatever the reason it was totally unacceptable.”
A Lucas County Human Services department caseworker in 1965 described the poverty in Spencer as “staggering” and “appalling.” Driving through some of the township today still evokes images of poverty and ruin — dilapidated homes, wild turkeys, and boarded up windows set against a backdrop of trees and swamp land.
Turn the corner and the juxtaposition is startling — Stone Oak Country Club and rows of expensive homes.
There was a “clean-up, fix-up, paint-up” campaign in 1958 to beautify the township. The Lucas County renewal agency razed 40 abandoned, crumbling dwellings in 1972. Nearby residents complained that the houses were rat-infested.
New Town, a county-proposed development in the 1960s, was supposed to start Spencer Township’s resurgence. It was to convert 4,700 acres of land off Angola Road into a city of 50,000. The project, which included $5.1 million from Lucas County, failed to ever really get off the ground.
It created a level of mistrust between Spencer and the county that remains.
“Lucas County has done more harm to Spencer Township than they’ve done good,” Mr. Lancaster said. “They bought all this land out here for the [West Winds] industrial park, and then they turned around and sold the land back to the Metroparks. Now they’ve done away with the tax base for new businesses to come into the township. There’s no way for the township to grow unless it buys more property and turns it into commercial property.”
‘A lightning rod’
Political controversy has never strayed far from Spencer Township.
“It’s this way because certain people agitate certain people,” Mr. Lancaster said. “A lot of people are afraid of change. Then you have people out here that have vendettas that go back 40 or 50 years, and they’ll never get rid of it.”
No one has played a bigger role in the township’s political drama than Mr. Smith, 75, who has been involved in one headline-grabbing story after another since he arrived in Spencer Township in 1968. He served as a trustee from 1973-1991, except for two years after losing his seat in 1977, and again from 2012-2015.
“Mr. Smith has done a lot of good for this township,” Mr. Lancaster said. “He’s stayed on top of all the political issues throughout the years. He takes that job very serious. Myself and Mr. Smith disagree on a lot of things. I flat told him, ‘You are the most arrogant person I have ever met, but you do the job that you’re asked to do.’ Anything I asked of him as chairman of the board, he did. My personal opinion is Mr. Smith loves this township. There are a lot people who don’t like his arrogance. But he’s kept this township going when others wanted to merge the township.”
The self-proclaimed “Earl of Spencershire,” Mr. Smith, who was born in The Bahamas, is known for his ascot-clad, colorful clothes.
“I do stick out because I’m a different character,” Mr. Smith told The Blade in 1991. “I add a dash of color to everything I do. I spent 16 to 18 years of my energies in Spencer. I’ve been a political parish priest out here.”
He lost a bid for re-election in 1977 and levied voter fraud allegations. A Lucas County grand jury found no election or registration irregularities.
More than a decade later, Mr. Smith again lobbed accusations during an election. This time, in 1985, he accused Anthony Kazmierczak, of not living in the township. The board of elections dismissed the claim, and Mr. Kazmierczak was not elected a trustee. In 1991, however, Mr. Kazmierczak would defeat Mr. Smith.
In the case with Mr. Valentine, 28, Mr. Hood and Mr. Smith voted unanimously at an emergency meeting to vacate Mr. Valentine’s seat and install Mr. Smith.
Their contention is Mr. Valentine, who was a student at Bowling Green State University before his deployment, had been absent from the township for 90 consecutive days, claiming that as grounds for Mr. Valentine’s removal from office.
But the Ohio Revised Code does not allow a trustee’s seat to be vacated if they are on military deployment. Mr. Smith now won’t talk to The Blade, failing to return multiple calls for comment.
“He’s a lightning rod,” Mr. Hood said of Mr. Smith. “He’s a different individual. We’ve had our areas of disagreement and disappointment. For an outsider, it looks like a place where you can have your way. To a certain extent, I think that’s what he intended to do. He’s also said Spencer is unlike any other place, and I agree with him. You can be friends today and enemies tomorrow, and vice versa.”
Hunt for bodies
Perhaps the township’s most embarrassing episode occurred in 1985 when Lucas County Sheriff James Telb launched a well-publicized — and nationally ridiculed — hunt for alleged victims of a satanic cult.
It lasted several weeks as deputies searched for an estimated 75 victims believed to have been murdered in satanic cult sacrifices. The sheriff went as far as to hold a news conference complete with maps and sketches of the bodies, akin to a pirate located valuable booty.
“Did he need to make a big media circus out of it? No,” Mr. Lancaster said.
Mr. Smith, then the chairman of the trustees, said Mr. Telb’s actions “bordered on being an irresponsible public official.”
The sheriff’s department concentrated on finding Charity Freeman, a 7-year-old who disappeared in 1982. Her grandfather, Leroy Freeman, was believed to have been involved in a cult. In 1988, Mr. Freeman was arrested in Huntington Beach, Calif., and Charity, by then a teenager, was found in his apartment.
A Bible, a Raiders of the Lost Ark poster, a bone, two blank tapes, and two Ozzy Osbourne albums were found in the dig.
No bodies were ever recovered.
“It angered me,” Mrs. Wiggins said. “I thought they made a mockery out of the community.”
Signs of hope
TARTA has long been a contentious issue in Spencer Township because of its property tax. The township tried twice unsuccessfully in the 1990s to withdraw from service. But it could not do so without unanimous consent from TARTA’s other members.
“The people in the west end didn’t use the service and never intended to use it, but they were paying for it on their taxes,” Mr. Lancaster said.
Finally, in 2013, Spencer Township residents voted to withdraw from TARTA. The township contracted briefly with Silver Cab in early 2014 to provide public transportation.
“It was terrible,” Mrs. Wiggins said.
In 2015, Spencer rejoined TARTA, though its future remains murky. The township utilized funds from a Joint Economic Development Zone with Whitehouse to pay for the service.
The township’s made improvements to its infrastructure, opened a full-time fire department in 2014, and purchased land. Spencer is devoid of significant commercial industry, hampering the township’s ability to create a reliable tax base.
“JEDZ is going to help this township tremendously,” Mr. Lancaster said. “We just started getting that money, so it’s going to take time to take the money and put it toward the damages that have been done throughout the years because of a lack of money. It’s going to be one of the most wonderful things to happen to this township.”
It’s one reason why the future could be starkly different compared to its woebegone past.
Another is simple geography.
“I truly believe this is the next big growth area. Springfield is full, Sylvania is full, Richfield is almost full. Spencer Township is sitting in the middle,” Mr. Lancaster said.
“Sylvania Township, Monclova Township, etc. are townships with their own school systems,” said Don Mewhort, who chairs the Lucas County Planning Commission and recently moved to Spencer Township. “The reason those townships have done well is because of the quality of their school systems. Spencer Township is rural and hasn’t evolved as quickly. The history of Spencer Township has led people not to go there. But Spencer Township’s problems are not insurmountable with the right leadership.”
Enter the Spencer Township Neighborhood Center and one immediately notices a buzz of activity. The clinic is filled with residents seeking doctor’s appointments, kids mill around playing games, and seniors are provided daily meals. It’s the township’s social hub.
“This is a great community,” said Carol Schull, 64, who runs the center. “It has a lot of diversity and a rich history. Spencer has a reputation that needs updated. It’s an up-and-coming community. Unfortunately, it hasn’t had the publicity and marketing that’s needed to change the perception. When you talk to people about Spencer, they still have a negative undertone that is wrong.”
Contact Kyle Rowland at: krowland@theblade.com, 419-724-6282, or on Twitter @KyleRowland.
First Published February 14, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
