Helen Foresman Spencer

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. Money from his and his wife's estate was donated to philanthropies throughout the Kansas City, Missouri area.

He was born in Columbus, Kansas but grew up in Pittsburg, Kansas.

Spencer graduated from the University of Kansas in 1926 and went into his father's business of Pittsburg & Midway Coal Company in Pittsburg, Kansas.

In 1941 the War Department contacted him about operating a weapons-grade ammonia nitrate plant in Galena, 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.

U.S. ordnance facilities were placed in the mid-U.S. during World War II. Other plants to be built and owned by others included the Kansas Ordnance Plant at Parsons, Kansas, the Sunflower Ordnance Plant at De Soto, Kansas, the Ozark Ordnance Plant at El Dorado, Arkansas.

After the war with help from J.H. 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. He succeeded his father as head of the Pittsburg and Midway. It was so successful that he was able to endow a foundation by 1949.

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