Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr.

Commander Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr. (September 20, 1888 – May 29, 1950) was a pioneering U.S. Navy pilot who served as the first commanding officer of Naval Air Station, San Diego. Known as Win, he was born in Kansas, a son of Earl Winfield Spencer, Sr. and his wife Agnes Lucy Hughes, and he attended Racine College in Racine, Wisconsin.

Spencer is remembered as the first husband of Bessie Wallis Warfield (1896 – 1986), whom he married on November 8, 1916. Spencer was alleged to be abusive and an alcoholic, and she is also alleged to have refused to consummate the marriage, which could have exacerbated his problems. At any rate, he and Wallis were divorced in December 1927. After a second marriage and divorce, she married the former Edward VIII of the United Kingdom and became the Duchess of Windsor.

On April 7, 1920, the future King Edward VIII, as Prince of Wales, briefly stopped off at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego en route to Australia and New Zealand. As a leading military couple, Earl and Wallis were invited to this event and Wallis may have first met her future husband at that time. However, other accounts of this period suggest that Wallis was visiting friends in Northern California and did not meet the Prince. (See "The Duchess of Windsor and the Coronado Legend" [http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/87fall/duchess.htm Part I] , [http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/88winter/duchess.htm Part II] .)

Spencer developed an association with the Italian fascists, and was made a Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy by Benito Mussolini in 1936.cite book|first=Charles |last=Higham|title=Mrs Simpson|publisher=Pan Books|year=2005|pages=p.50-51|isbn=0-330-42678-8]

Spencer's second wife was Miriam J. Spencer. They were divorced in 1936.

His third wife was Norma Reese (1889 – ?), the widow of Homer Stuyvesant Johnson, a Detroit manufacturer. She was a daughter of Carl Reese. Spencer and Mrs. Johnson were married in Los Angeles, California, on July 4, 1937. The wedding was a double ceremony; the other couple was Norma Johnson's daughter, Betty Johnson, an actress and songwriter, and Balie Peyton Legare, Jr., a jazz musician known as Peyton Legare.

Norma and Earl Spencer separated on February 9, 1940 and were divorced later that year in Santa Monica, California. Both parties charged cruelty, and Norma declared that her husband was a plagued by what The New York Times's announcement of their acrimonious divorce delicately called "habitual intemperance."

Commander Spencer died in Coronado, California.

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