On Friday, June 24, Mr. Spencer, 85, editor of the Daily News from September 1975 to August 1984, died at New York University Hospital.
When Mr. Spencer announced that he was leaving to become the top editor at the New York Daily News, Eugene L. Roberts Jr., executive editor of The Inquirer, told a Philadelphia Daily News reporter, "It's a major loss. . . . He's a weird and wonderful editor."
Between fiercely competitive newsmen like them, "weird" was a compliment.
Mr. Spencer was not just a terrific editor. He was a pretty good writer, winning a 1974 Pulitzer Prize for his editorials at the Trentonian in New Jersey's capital.
But he was also a lover of lost causes, some of whom turned out pretty well.
Like columnist Dexter, who after his Daily News days went on to earn a 1988 National Book Award for his novel Paris Trout.
In Spooner, his 2009 memoir thinly disguised as a novel, Dexter named himself Spooner and named the editor who changed his life . . . well, what else?
"Gilman was lying on the davenport with his eyes covered when he called Spooner in to inform him of the change," Dexter wrote of the moment that he became a columnist, a moment that did not exactly thunder throughout the building.
"A cigarette was going in the ashtray on his stomach.
" 'Nine hundred words,' he said, 'three times a week. That's it.' "
"Yes, Gilman loved the lost causes, and yes, Spooner saw the connection, but took no offense. You might even say that he loved Gilman back."
Mr. Spencer did not come from the community of blue-collar workers at whom his newspaper was aimed.
A 1950 obituary for his father, F. Gilman Spencer, stated that he was a special deputy attorney general in charge of state inheritance-tax matters.
