Despite dealing with Parkinson’s, Steve Spencer stays positive
Published in the Sept. 3- 16, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Robert Airoldi
Parkinson’s disease may have slowed Steve Spencer a bit, but he refuses to let it define him.
Senior profile
of Steve Spencer
Spencer volunteers for the Michael J. Fox Foundation — he just helped with a fundraiser putting on the play “Love Letters” in which the group raised about $10,000. He spends his days exercising, listening to audio books, and up until June working one day a week for the Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers, where he has been involved for more than 20 years.
“Any day I can get up and move is a good day,” he said. “I’ve just got to stay positive.”
Parkinson’s is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that results in the death of dopamine-generating cells in the mid-brain. Early symptoms are movement-related, including shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty walking.
In 2005 he was diagnosed with the disease. He worked for five years as the disease slowly progressed and eventually retired in 2010.
“I was having symptoms like the classic resting tremors,” he said. “It just got tougher and tougher.”
He said he noticed the little things before he was diagnosed, such as have a tough time buttoning his shirts and one of his friends and colleague who is blind could hear his gait had changed.
The 59-year-old speech therapist worked for the Morgan Hill Unified School District, as did his wife Kae, also a speech therapist.
They arrived in Morgan Hill in 1979 after they decided to move away from Southern California, which he calls “a good place to be from.”
Neither had jobs, so they were interviewing throughout the Bay Area when a friend told him the Morgan Hill Unified School District was hiring. When he finished the interview, he mentioned to the gentleman interviewing him that his wife was also looking for work. He asked if she was available for an interview. Spencer said she was waiting outside. So in her shorts and T-shirt she interviewed. They both got jobs.
“The district even helped us find an apartment,” he said. Back then there was one stoplight, at the intersection of Monterey Road and Dunne Avenue.
Spencer, who moved to San Martin in 1993, credits Morgan Hill’s small-town feel to the city’s growth control ordinance.
“Morgan Hill’s growth plan paid off big time,” Spencer said. “You can still drive by ag land, orchards and farms. Sure, there’s been development. There always will. But (the city) did it with intelligence.”
Spencer — the father of two grown daughters, Malia, 33, lives in Portland; and Alika, 28, lives in San Jose — now has a service dog to help him and he carries a cane for balance.
“It’s not always needed, but when you need it, you’re glad it’s there,” he said of the cane. The same could be said for his dog, Nandi, a 2-year-old Rhodesian Ridgeback.
Throughout the interview, Nandi sat quietly at his side, alternating between lying down and sitting.
“It’s still a learning process, but she’s much more confident now,” Spencer said. “At first she was leery of being left alone, but she’s getting better and better all the time.”
And Spencer hopes he himself can, if not see progress, at least slow the progression of the disease.
He has been enrolled in a clinical trial of a new deep brain stimulation process that will insert electrodes into his brain. This process can improve symptoms and he said he’s “cautiously optimistic.”
Spencer said he and his wife want to travel more. In 2008, they visited Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands. Now he’d like to visit Tahiti, the South Seas and New Zealand.
Spencer said he has a good support system of family and friends in Morgan Hill.
“I live in the moment,” he said. Quoting perhaps the best baseball player in the Negro Leagues, Leroy “Satchel” Paige, Spencer said: “Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.”
