Kenneth A. Spencer

Kenneth A. Spencer

Kenneth Aldred Spencer (January 25, 1902-February 19, 1960) was a Kansas coal mine owner who transformed a government surplus factory into the world's biggest ammonium nitrate producer. Money from his and his wife's estate was donated to philanthropies throughout the Kansas City, Missouri area.

He was born in Columbus, Kansas but grew up in Pittsburg, Kansas.

Spencer graduated from the University of Kansas in 1926 and went into his father's business of Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Company in Pittsburg, Kansas.

In 1941 the War Department contacted him about operating a weapons-grade ammonia nitrate plant in Galena, Kansas that would become the Jayhawk Ordnance Works. He would say later:

They wanted us to build and operate a big basic chemical plant. I didn't know about operating such a plant, but they told us anyone who could operate an electric shovel, move 30 or 40 feet of overburden to get an 18-inch seam of coal, and make it pay, could operate anything.

He set up the Military Chemical Works, Inc. as a subsidiary of Pittsburg & Midway with himself as President and built the plant by 1943 with it producing 14,500 tons a month.

U.S. ordnance facilities were placed in the mid-U.S. during World War II. Other plants to be built and owned by others included the Kansas Ordnance Plant at Parsons, Kansas, the Sunflower Ordnance Plant at DeSoto, Kansas, the Ozark Ordnance Plant at El Dorado, Arkansas.

After the war with help from J.H. Whitney & Company he entered into a lease with an option to buy (which he did in 1951) the plant to use the ammonia nitrate into fertilizer under the new name of Spencer Chemical. He succeeded his father as head of the Pittsburg and Midway. It was so successful that he was able to endow a foundation by 1949.

Spencer would also buy plants in Calumet City, Illinois, Henderson, Kentucky, Vicksburg, Mississippi, Fort Worth, Texas and Orange, Texas.

Spencer was one of the nine original founders of the Midwest Research Institute. Its first mission was finding peaceful use of ammonium nitrate He would be chairman of the Board of Trustrees from 1954 to 1957.