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The 87-year-old retired teacher fills her days with people, activities and organizations.

"If I'm going to be in any organization, be it religious, educational, recreational, political, or community, I believe in being active. They need another piece of deadwood like they need a hole in the head," Spencer said.

Spencer will do any necessary job. Recently she spent two days picking up highway trash, one day on M-25 with a group from St. John's Lutheran Church, and another day along M-53 with people from ABATE (American Bikers Aiming Toward Education).

After her retirement, Spencer volunteered at the Carsonville-Port Sanilac elementary school for about 15 years. Because of her interest in education, she also attended the school board meetings for several years and regularly gave the board the benefit of her opinions. She is active with the St. John's Women's Missionary League and the Ladies' Aid society. She taught Sunday school for 30 years.

Spencer is co-president of the Sanilac County chapter of the Michigan Association of Retired School Personnel.

Spencer attends county Democratic Party meetings and supports Representative John Espinoza by marching with him in parades, doing door-to-door campaigning, and helping at fund-raising activities.

For many years she walked the five miles across the Mackinac Bridge during the annual Labor Day event, but in recent years she has substituted the fundraising Alzheimer's walk in Port Sanilac. Also recently she earned her 10-gallon pin for blood donations.

"The best part of doing something is when you know the person you are helping cannot repay you in any way," she said.

Spencer enjoys getting outside and mowing her three-acre lawn, and she bowls weekly in the Wednesday morning ladies' league at Liberty Lanes in Sandusky.

Spencer met her friend Al Schmidt during lunch at the Bark Shanty senior citizen meal site. After about a month of seeing her at the meal site, Schmidt asked her how she'd react if he asked her to go for a motorcycle ride to Frankenmuth.

"Find me a helmet," was her reply.

She and Al are still riding his Harley, and they are active in ABATE, which meets in Argyle and at Shady Shores in Sanilac Township.

"I feel extremely fortunate and blessed to be in such good physical shape," Spencer said. Spencer takes no medications. She has no explanation for her continuing good health and energy. She recalls that since her family was so poor, they ate nothing at all like the balanced meals that are recommended today.

"I'm not just existing," she said in her sunny orange and yellow kitchen. "I'm living. I find it an advantage to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, and with whomever I want to do it."

Spencer grew up in Detroit. Her father was gassed in World War I, and died in 1929, so her mother supported herself and her two daughters by doing housework and sewing.

"My mother managed to keep us off of welfare, but we were extremely poor," Spencer remembered.

At Cass Technological High School, Spencer took all the courses leading up to a nursing career, but after she graduated in 1938, no hospital would take her on because she has sight in only one eye due to a childhood illness. With help from a scholarship, she began a teaching program at Michigan State Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University).

After she had completed two years of college, Spencer left school in the middle of a semester in order to join the service because she wanted to help with the American war effort during World War II.

"They wouldn't take me because of my eye," Spencer said. "Why I didn't think of that before I quit school, I don't know."

Spencer went to work for a small factory in Ferndale that made airplane parts because she wanted to do as much for the war effort as possible.

It was in the Ferndale factory she met Marshall Spencer, 16 years her senior. They married in 1942 and settled down in Farmington. They had a daughter and a son.

After her children were in school full time, Spencer decided, with Marshall's support and encouragement, to finish her teaching degree. She went to Wayne State because she could reach it by bus after walking a mile down 8 Mile Road to Grand River. She began teaching first grade for Farmington Schools.

Spencer got to know Sanilac County because Marshall hunted with the late Russell Booth near Applegate. When Marshall retired from A&P in 1970, the couple bought a farmhouse on Washington Road that had not been lived in for ten years. There was a birds' nest in the living room. Marshall remodeled the house. On weekends for 16 years Marion drove up from Farmington to Washington Road.