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.
[1] As a trained geologist and engineer Spencer patented processes for extracting by-products from coal which led to the establishment of the Mineral Products Company of Pittsburg.
In 1941 the War Department contacted him about operating a weapons-grade ammonia nitrate plant near Crestline, Kansas that would become the Jayhawk Ordnance Works.
He would say later: 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.
Whitney & Company he entered into a lease with an option to buy (which he did in 1951) the plant to use the ammonia nitrate as fertilizer under the new name of Spencer Chemical.
[9] Helen Elizabeth Foresman (November 8, 1902 – February 15, 1982) was born in Joplin, Missouri and grew up in Amarillo, Texas and spent high school in Pittsburg, Kansas where she married Kenneth Spencer on January 6, 1927.