“Informing Cleveland County”
www.shelbyinfo.com Our 41st Year • Issue No. 52 • December 24, 2024
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96-year old Bill Spangler has passed his sports excellence genes on down the line By Alan Hodge Throughout history some families have been able to pass down particular talents to succeeding generations. Examples of this phenomenon are the Bach and Strauss clans in classical music and the Earnhardt and Petty folks in motorsports. Add to that list 96-year-old Bill Spangler of Shelby and his natural talent in sports that he has passed down to his great grandchildren Ella Jane and Grant Osada like an Olympic torchbearer handing off the flaming torch. First a bit about Bill. Spangler grew up in a time when Cleveland County was an agricultural powerhouse and simple pleasures were the norm. “I was born on September 9, 1928, and raised on a farm on Kings Rd. in Shelby,” he said. “We raised cotton and corn. I plowed the fields with an old mule. I didn’t wear shoes and some days my feet hurt so bad from the rocks that I had to soak them in a bucket of kerosene. We would take the corn to the mill in Belwood where it would be made into cornmeal for cornbread.”
Bill Spangler, 96, was a sports standout in his younger days. He’s seen with his greatgranddaughter Ella Jane Osada who is also a stellar track and field athlete in her own right.
Bill and his wife Janie Sue were married for 70 years. She passed away on August 11, 2020. “We met in a cotton patch,” Spangler says. “She was sixteen years old. We had some good years together.” They had four kids- Mark and his wife Sandy live in Ohio, Barbara (Charlie deceased) lives in Shelby, Susan and WeeDee live in Waco, Tommy passed away in 2014. It was during his teen school years that Spangler came to love athletics. Hurdles and pole vaulting were his track and field specialties, “I practiced pole vaulting with a big bamboo cane from the river,” he said. “We landed on the hard ground. We made our hurdles in shop class out of wood.” Basketball was another Spangler Bill and his wife Janie Sue in their youth. The photo shows her at age 16 and he’s 21.
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School for Spangler started at the elementary on Marion St. He went to junior high then high school at Township #3 School in Earl. His working life began at the Auto In garage near the Banker’s House on N. Lafayette St. He also toiled at Hudson Hosiery and Celanese (retired in 1987) and even ran a concrete contracting company until 2005.
& BROAD RIVER HAMS
specialty favorite. He was a valuable member of the Hudson Hosiery basketball team and was the high scorer in many games. Spangler shared an interesting basketball story from #3 School where the gym was an uninsulated tin building. “It had a pot-bellied stove for
heat, but it was still mighty cold,” he said. “One game I recall was the time we traveled to Valdese and played against a team from the NC School for the Deaf,” he said. “They talked to each other on the court with sign language.” See SPANGLER, Page 2
Ella Jane in the starting block for the 400-meter dash Championship in Eugene, OR, at the 2024 Nike Outdoor Nationals. Like Us On
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Bill is seen (rear row left) with his Hudson Hosiery basketball teammates, ‘circa 1960’.
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