Janet Spencer

Janet Spencer passed peacefully in her sleep at her home in North Ft. Myers, Florida, on Saturday, January 4, 2020.

She was preceded in death by husband, Robert Spencer in 2013, and her sister & brother-in-law, Margaret (Peg) & Roy McClellan.

Born in Alliance, Ohio, on April 5 in 1927, she is survived by her five children: Kathy Knoch Brown (Jim), Robert Stewart Spencer Jr. (Linda), Paula Kirby, John Spencer (Sharon), and Barbara Spencer Singer. She is also survived by thirteen grandchildren and sixteen great-grandchildren. Janet was also a resident of Lakeside, Ohio.

Janet graduated Alliance High School in 1944 and then earned her teaching degree from Mount Union College during World War II. She was an active member of the Tri Delta sorority her entire life. She earned her Master’s in Education during the late 1970’s from Kent State University. Janet taught high school for 30 years at Marlington (Alliance, Ohio).

She married Robert Stewart Spencer of Alliance, Ohio on June, 12, 1948 and they celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary just before Robert passed in 2013.

Janet was well known for her lifetime passion for boating and also authored several magazine articles in 1977 in Lakeland Boating, journaling everyday life on a boat with a family traveling the waterways between the Great Lakes and Florida. Their youngest child had just turned eight years old. She was often known to work in stories of their boating trips into her English lectures. She was editor of the Marlington Yearbook for many years. She was also active in the Alliance Women’s Club, the Gravel Bar Yacht Club, the Put-in-Bay Yacht Club, the Lakeside Women’s Club, the Lakeside Methodist Church, and Christ United Methodist Church (Alliance). Janet and her husband Robert were also very active in the United States Power Squadrons Sail and Power Boating. For those who knew Janet, she was also an ardent bridge player and continued to play regularly until just before her death. Janet enjoyed world travel and visited (and sometimes led trips) to nearly every country in Europe; as well as Egypt, China, Thailand, the Caribbean, and Hawaii.  Janet was an avid reader and in her retirement, she was a regular volunteer at the Lakeside United Methodist Church library. Janet and her husband Robert were also charter members of the Crews Nest private boating club which was established on South Bass Island in 1970. Janet (with many friends and family), have explored the Great Lakes and boated the Intercoastal waterway from Lakeside, Ohio, through the Erie Barge Canal, down the Atlantic, and across Florida to the Gulf of Mexico six times. Janet’s and her husband’s passion for boating began with a trip on the Intercoastal Waterway in the late fifties with fellow boating friends from Alliance, Ohio.

Calling hours will be held from 10 a.m. - Noon, Saturday, January 11, 2020 at Cassaday-Turkle-Christian Funeral Home, with a service at Noon with Rev. David Kowaleski officiating. A graveside burial will follow at Fairmount Memorial Park, 4199 South Union Avenue Alliance, Ohio.

A celebration service of Janet’s life will be held at Lakeside United Methodist Church, Lakeside, Marblehead later this spring.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Lakeside United Methodist Church 450 Central Avenue, Lakeside, OH 43440 or to Marblehead, Ohio Public Library 710 W Main St, Lakeside Marblehead, OH 43440.

Arrangements are by Cassaday-Turkle-Christian Funeral Home 75 S. Union Ave., Alliance, OH 44601.