Life doesn't slow for octogenarian
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Ivy Spencer has never forgotten the little girl who got her first pair of new shoes. The child received a gift card for a new pair for Christmas through the non-profit organization for which Sister Spencer volunteers.
"That was the first time that 8-year-old girl had been to the shoe store," recalled Sister Spencer of the Sugarhouse Ward, Salt Lake Sugarhouse Stake. She spoke quietly of the other hundreds of children from families struggling with mental illness that P.J.'s Forgotten Children serves in the Salt Lake Valley with the help of the local mental health organization.
The 81-year-old serves as the organization's board secretary and has often used her Salt Lake apartment as a storage unit for donated toys, quilts, candy, Christmas stockings, school supplies and clothes for children from these needy families. "My apartment always looks like a bomb hit it," she said with a chuckle.
Today, heaped in her living room are 14 donated quilts and some 50 bags of candy. The candy, she explained, was left over from the annual Halloween party the Relief Society participated in at a nearby nursing home. When Sister Spencer is not stuffing Christmas stockings or packing back-to-school kits for P.J.'s with other volunteers, she's at the nursing home where she serves as branch Relief Society president. Every year, some 375 to 400 children from the local elementary school are invited to the nursing home to join the residents for a Halloween movie and spook alley, and then punch, cookies and candy. This year's leftover Halloween candy, she said, will go into Christmas stockings for P.J.'s Forgotten Children.
In addition to the usual weekly — and sometimes almost daily — responsibilities of a Relief Society president, Sister Spencer also helps organize entertainment for a Hawaiian week for the residents, as well as several other events.
"I've come to the conclusion over the years that being busy, if you're doing something useful, is probably the best thing in the world for you to stay young and stay mentally active and physically active, too. A lot of people say to me, 'How do you manage to do all these things?' Well, I've been very blessed to have been given good health. A lot of people say I don't look my age."
She doesn't. The octogenarian has brown hair with only flicks of gray. Her quick, warm smile has greeted needy children whose parents struggle with mental illness or nursing home residents lonely for companionship. Sister Spencer has been in the branch Relief Society presidency since 1992. She became the president in 1994.
But there is always time for her own family. She and her husband, James Edward Spencer, who died in 1991, have three children, 10 grandchildren and 14-great-grandchildren. They met in the United States and married in the Salt Lake Temple in 1967, but they were both born in England. Sister Spencer arrived here in 1948.
She laughs when she talks about combining their families, one son from her previous marriage, and two from his. "You know lots of people have instant potatoes; we have instant family," she quipped. She recalls serving in the Ontario Quebec Mission with Brother Spencer from 1971-1973. When his health began to fail in 1985, they traveled to England to see their families.
Since his death, she has not allowed life to slow down. If anything, it sped up. Since 1989, she has served with P.J.'s, which began in 1986 in response to holiday depression among parents with mental illnesses who were below the poverty level and could not provide Christmas for their children. P.J.'s provides for some 500 children each year for Christmas. But Sister Spencer said she has met only about 10 of them in all her years with the organization. Therapists from Valley Mental Health deliver the applications from families to P.J.'s, which then selects needy families to help. The toys and gifts are delivered to parents.
"The intention is that Santa Claus comes," Sister Spencer explained.
With a little help from some elves.
From time to time, the Church News will feature members who are 80 years of age or older who serve in their wards, stakes or communities. Readers are invited to send submissions to Julie Dockstader Heaps, P.O. Box 1257, Salt Lake City, UT 84110; or e-mail julied@desnews.com
