Conference Memories Ep. 1: Steve Spencer

If you don't know Steve, or "Doc" as his students have always called him (to his face), then you are in for a treat. The anecdotes are legendary; he's written a collection of stories as "Dr. Odell Buckenflush", recently retired from teaching at Western Kentucky University, and is refurbishing a house in the Ozarks with his wife Debbie. He also likes canoes. Steve hung out with Paul Petzoldt on the first WEA Professional Short course (led by Jack Drury and Mark Wagstaff) in 1991, and he quickly progressed through the WEA instructor ranks while leading courses at WKU. He has served on the WEA Board, received the Frank Lupton Service Award, and is now a Lifetime Member of the WEA - so we're stuck with him. 

He's my mentor and hero so I asked him to recount a few of his strongest memories from WEA conferences (now that he's old and retired, I use the word "strongest" loosely).

Will Hobbs
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Memories of WEA Conferences Past

One [memory] has to be the auction that the guy from CCO in Pennsylvania led (I can't remember his name...Dave? Paul [Harbison] or Francois would know). He had the crowd rolling with laughter and I bought some of Cheryl [Teeter's] moose underwear and put them on while on stage. 

At another conference, Paul [Petzoldt] was signing his mountaineering posters for my sons, Beau and Ty, and he got pissed because he wrote the wrong name on the poster... He said, "Well, $*%&*!" and tore it up while sitting at the table. Afterwards it was pretty funny, but I remember when it happened it caught me off guard. 

It was a big surprise when I received the Frank Lupton Service Award around 2006. I was totally surprised and as I went up on the stage to receive it, Jack Drury was yelling, "Speech! Speech!"... I couldn't have talked if I wanted to. 

But more than any single conference event or memory, I just think the social contacts and acquaintances of folks in the field blur into really enjoyable memories that were the highlight of my career. In my previous life "as a college football coach," the annual coaches' conferences were full of guys who had been fired and were scrambling for jobs, so it was never an enjoyable social time with no shared knowledge. 

At WEA conferences, I always left with something beyond the social networking that I could apply in my teaching. "For when you stop learning, you begin to die."  

Dr. Steve Spencer