John “Jack” Edward Spencer Jr., father of three children, musician, architectural designer, historic theatre proprietor, woodworker, and Jack of many other trades, passed away in his home in Crescent City, Calif., on Feb. 17th, 2025. He was 67 years old.
Jack, a nickname he began to use around 2006, was driven by many creative ventures in both his personal and professional life. He often looked for the humor in the mundane, the tragedy, the uncomfortable, and the celebrations. Jack was able to build community and find companionship no matter where he lived.
Jack and his sisters grew up in Kenmore, N.Y., an early suburb built on the northside of Buffalo, in a house purchased by their great-grandfather where they lived with their parents, Jack and Eileen. Summers were spent just across the Canadian border in Fort Erie, Ontario, where the family enjoyed being lakeside for some 70 years.
Music was always a large part of Jack’s life, inspired in no small part by his father, Jack Sr., a heating salesman for his father’s business and an artist at heart who loved to draw, paint, and perform as a drummer at local venues. He and Eileen loved jazz and big band sounds. Music was an important part of the family’s life. Jack Jr. enjoyed playing his father’s big wooden drum set in their basement, and when Jack received his first guitar at age 8, he would use his dad’s high hat for rhythm and learned to play harmonica, which he used to accompany his guitar. Jack’s sisters took piano lessons. Jack didn’t need them. He, like his dad, could simply sit down at the piano and play. Jack received early notoriety for songwriting, including in local newspaper articles and having his original songs performed by a local church in Buffalo at the age of 14.
Throughout his life, Jack continued to play piano, guitar, harmonica, drums, and sing. Jack could not read sheet music well, nor was he classically trained in music theory, but he had natural gifts and a love for the craft. He once auditioned for a music academy where he was asked to play certain musical scales. After failing to do so, the auditioners asked him to play a piece he knew, and his performance so thoroughly floored them that he was offered placement in the third year of the program. Alas, he passed on the opportunity. Jack could be somewhat reserved in sharing his music. When he did share, it was a gift to all in earshot.
In the last weeks of his life, Jack was focused on recording his latest compositions and fine-tuning his craft. He was in touch with a new local musician friend about using his recording studio and also taking those long-neglected piano lessons from another local musician. A copy of The Artist’s Way was on his kitchen table, and song notes were under his piano when he died.
Jack’s most prominent profession was in architectural design. Jack’s work included notoriety in publications for works in Minnesota, as well as being highlighted for the TV program Dream House on HGTV. Even in recent years, he was honored in developing the architectural and landscape designs for the remodel of the historic home he shared with his partner in Napa, under the name Frozen Music Architecture. Jack created the Waterland Group in the Minneapolis, Minn. area to share his architectural designs, which prospered for many years.
From 2015 to 2017, Jack was able to work professionally in his passion for the arts by restoring and running the Big River Theatre in Alma, Wisc., booking an admirable lineup of musical acts, films, and storytellers to that quaint Mississippi River town two hours downstream from Minneapolis, Minn. It was here that Jack also enjoyed hosting Socrates Cafe, an exchange of philosophical perspectives with gatherings organized by volunteers worldwide.
Jack was also filled with love for visual arts. In recent years, he volunteered to help showcase the work of Val Polyanin, an ex-pat of Soviet Ukraine, recognizing the special opportunity Crescent City had to exhibit this man’s extraordinary work that had been largely overlooked for decades. Jack enjoyed taking many photographs himself and was also a supporter of friends’ photography projects, even helping finance a friend’s studio in Florida.
Jack’s artistic affinities were also present in the early work that engrossed most of his early time in Colorado: woodworking. Jack built his sister Gail her first set of furniture, which she still cherishes, the beautiful oak desk and bookcase he built for her, as well as the oak-framed mirrors he gifted to each of his sisters. Jack also built a crib for his Mary, which continues to be in the family to this day. Jack and his soon-to-be brother-in-law John “JP” Peters met through Emerson Woodworking in Denver, Colo. When JP’s sister-in-law came to visit from Minnesota, JP invited Jack, who was much closer to her age, to a party they were hosting. Not long after, Jack and Janean Kelly (née Dahmes) had their first date: a Pat Metheny concert at Red Rocks.
No other passion or pursuit gave Jack more pride than the fathering of his three children with Janean.
His eldest son, Adam, lives in the area that anchored Jack for his last two years of life, the redwoods and river canyons near Crescent City. Jack experienced Adam’s adventure tourism business through many mild and wild rafting, kayaking, and biking trips, including rafting the remote North Fork Smith River. Adam, his fiancé Lauren Godla and their dog Tombo enjoyed much time together with Jack, including recent Thanksgivings and a Christmas. They also received Jack’s generosity of using his carpentry skills on various house projects.
Jack was an early advocate of his middle son Colin’s aviation pursuits and later enjoyed many of the benefits of Colin’s commercial airline pilot career, traveling together, sometimes with Colin at the helm, including to Cuba, Tokyo, and a recent month-long sojourn to the Philippines. Colin was also able to show Jack around his current home of Greenwich Village, seeing live music and cycling around New York City, two-wheel transportation being a favorite pastime of Jack’s.
Tiernan Gannon (née Spencer), Jack’s youngest child, had many opportunities to indulge Jack in the wonders of her chosen Rocky mountain home in Breckenridge, Colo. Adventures such as whitewater rafting the Arkansas River together, being there for the ribbon-cutting of Tiernan’s professional success in founding and directing an early childhood learning center, walking Tiernan down the aisle in her 2021 marriage to Rob and simply seeing the richness of Tiernan and Rob’s robust mountain community brought joy to his heart. Jack is survived by his first grandchild with Tiernan expecting March 2025.
Jack and his two surviving sisters, Mary and Gail, were fortunate to spend many weeks together in their hometown region of Buffalo, N.Y., over the last year to be with their brother-in-law David Meltzer, who was under Hospice care until his death in July. Jack served in a similar end-of-life caregiver role for his mother Eileen as she lived out her last years in North Palm Beach, Fla. His support extended to volunteering as president for his mother’s homeowners association, helping them secure proper insurance and a new roof for the condo complex.
Jack was filled with love. He was filled with love for the arts and artists. In the last two years that he lived in Crescent City he became one of the most common faces one might see at live music events, listening with an attentive and appreciative ear and sharing his praise or constructive feedback. Jack’s ability to be humble allowed others to shine and feel seen by him. Jack always found the energy to lift others up and take the spotlight off of himself. His selfless love was never questioned by his family and friends.
Jack was raised in a Catholic family and went to Catholic school, facts he would attribute to being devoutly anything but Catholic or a fan of organized religion. And yet, spirituality remained an important part of his life. In Minnesota he enjoyed participating in A Course In Miracles study groups as well as helping the music program of the Recovery Church near his home in downtown Minneapolis. In the last few years, those spiritual and supportive communities included local AA groups and the Universal Heart Center, a Crescent City-based spiritual group that led a memorial service for him on Feb. 21st, 2025.
Jack was the loving father to Adam Spencer (Lauren Godla), Colin Spencer, and Tiernan (Rob) Gannon, grandfather to Archer John Gannon, son of the late John E. Spencer Sr. and Eileen Tiernan Spencer Hennessey, brother to the late Anne (late David) Meltzer, Mary (Joseph) Lischka, and Gail (late David) Schickele, uncle to the late Daniel Granica, niece Gail Lischka Granica, and nephew Nighttrain Schickele, and remembered by beloved cousins and cherished friends dating to his childhood.
Details for a future celebration of life in a less remote corner of the country will be forthcoming. Flowers are respectfully declined. Donations can be made to the Universal Heart Center. Mail checks to UHC, PO Box 1650, Crescent City, CA 95531.