Spanos did 'more for this community than most anyone else'
For Douglass Wilhoit Jr., one of the things that stands out the most about developer Alex Spanos and his wife, Faye, is that he remained true to his hometown right up until the end.
“I think that’s the long-lasting legacy,” Wilhoit, CEO and executive director of the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce, said Tuesday morning. “They were Stocktonians who stayed here and believed in the community.
“Through ups and downs, people should learn that this is your home and you all join hands to make it a better place. That’s what he did.”
Spanos, who rose from humble beginnings in Stockton to build a $2.4 billion family fortune, died early Tuesday morning in his home. He was 95.
Jeffrey Michael, director of the Center for Business and Policy Research at University of the Pacific, said Spanos’s decision to spend his entire life in the city where he was born in 1923 was more than simply a nice piece of trivia for Stockton.
“He built a company that was national in scope,” Michael said. “We’re not talking about just a local developer. But it stayed headquartered here in Stockton all these years. A corporate headquarters in a community is an important asset.”
Douglass Eberhardt, CEO of the Bank of Stockton, said Spanos did “more for this community than most anyone else, and most if it has been behind the scenes.”
“Nobody has done what he’s done, and we can’t even begin to know the depth and breadth of it all, because he has given to so many causes,” he said. “He is without doubt one of the largest philanthropists in Stockton and throughout Northern California.”
The NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers announced Spanos’s death Tuesday. The Spanos family has owned the franchise since 1984, and the team’s statement listed several suggested recipients of donations in the name of Alex Spanos.
They are American Legion-Karl Ross Post #15 in Stockton; the Stockton Scholars Endowment Fund at University of the Pacific; the Discovery ChalleNGe Academy; and the YMCA of San Joaquin County.
Spanos is survived by his four children, 15 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Contact reporter Roger Phillips at (209) 546-8299 or rphillips@recordnet.com. Follow him on Twitter @rphillipsblog.
