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Spuehler, Norman
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- NORMAN SPUEHLER -

Norman William Spueher was born on June 1, 1927, near the inland port city of Stockton, California; an only child of Jacob and Bessie Spuehler.  Norman's father was born February 2, 1887, in the village of Wasterkingen, Zurich, Switzerland; his mother was born near the town of Fillmore in the Territory of Utah on January 10, 1892.  Norman’s parents conducted a landscape nursery business, growing plants, flowers, shrubs, and trees on a two-and-a-half acre plot of land in the countryside several miles west of Stockton, California. An important part of the business was the landscaping and yard care that Mr. Spuehler provided at the homes of numerous customers in the city.
 
In addition to their busy work life, the Spuehlers were active members of the Stockton Seventh-day Adventist Church. Mr. Spuehler served as church elder; Mrs. Spuehler as church organist. Norman was baptized in the Stockton church in the spring of 1939.
 
Norman entered the first grade in the Adventist grammar school in Stockton in the fall of 1934, traveling back and forth by street car. Because of his early arrival at school each day, Norman was able to finish grades one and two in that first year. He also finished grades six and seven in the same year later on, and graduated from grade school in 1940. 
 
In December 1934, Norman’s father developed a bacterial infection and died very unexpectedly in January 1935. With hired help, Mrs. Spuehler continued to run the nursery business for the next several years. After graduation from grade school, Norman enrolled in an Adventist high school in nearby Lodi, California, driving back and forth each day with cousins who were also enrolled there.
 
In the spring of 1941, Norman’s mother received an offer from an Oregon couple to purchase the Stockton property. A land contract was negotiated within a few days after Norman’s school was dismissed for the summer. The Spuehlers moved from Stockton to Angwin, California, a college community in the hills overlooking the Napa Valley. That fall, Norman’s mother enrolled in Pacific Union College as a freshman music education major, and Norman entered the College preparatory school as a high school sophomore. During his junior year of high school, Norman attended an Adventist boarding school in northwest Oregon, Laurelwood Academy. On his 17th birthday, Norman graduated from Golden Gate Academy, an Adventist day high school in Berkeley, California. 
 
In August 1944, Norman joined the U.S. Navy Active Reserve, took his basic training at Farragut, Idaho; then, a basic engineering course at Great Lakes Naval Training Station near Chicago, Illinois; and, on to Fleet City, California, where he was to ship out for Guam Island, assigned to a motor pool there. Within hours of his scheduled departure, he became ill and was diagnosed with the mumps. After 21 days in quarantine, he was transferred to another part of the hospital where tests revealed an eye infection. Following several weeks of treatment, he was discharged honorably from the military in July 1945, only a short time before the Japanese surrender. 
 
During Norman’s high school days and his one-year hitch in the Navy reserve, his mother continued her college studies, and received her BA Degree in Music Education in the summer of 1945. She taught piano for several years, but was forced into early retirement because of failing vision.
 
Upon leaving the military, Norman went to work in a General Motors machine shop. But military contracts with the shop were cancelled a few weeks after the end of the war, so he went to work as a night manager for a fast food restaurant chain in Oakland. In the late spring of 1946, Norman headed east with friends, settled in York, Pennsylvania, boarded and roomed with a family there and worked the swing shift as assistant foreman in a wire screen factory.
 
In the summer 1947, Norman returned to California, and in January 1948 he enrolled at Santa Rosa Junior College. After three semesters, he transferred to Pacific Union College. Following graduation in 1952, Norman took a public relations job with Loma Linda (California) University. During Norman’s eight-year tenure with Loma Linda, he and his wife, Evelyn, became parents of a son (Kent) and a daughter (Jackie). 
 
Throughout his years of active employment, Norman remained in the health care field. After Loma Linda, Norman served as a Director of Public Relations with Glendale Sanitarium and Hospital, then as Executive Director with Hospital Planning Association of Southern California. In 1964, Norman accepted a position as the Director of Public Relations with Kettering Memorial Hospital. In 1966, he accepted a position with a pharmacutical firm in Pearl River, New York; returning to Ohio in 1969, and eventually retiring from the Ohio Hospital Association in Columbus, Ohio in 1989.
 
Norman’s mother died in February 1985 at 93 years of age; outliving Norman’s father by a little more than 50 years.
 
Currently, Norman lives with his pet cat in a condominium apartment that he purchased in 1989. Both of Norman’s children live in the Denver, Colorado area. Kent lives on his own in his condominium apartment not far from the downtown area. Jackie lives with her husband in Castle Rock, south of downtown. Their two sons have graduated from college, each with business degrees. 
 
Although Norman grew up in a Christian home and received most of his education in the Adventist school system, he left the Christian life during the later years of his professional career. In the latter part of 1989 he began attending church again, and on Sabbath, May 9, 1992, Norman was re-baptized. He is an active member of the Eastwood Seventh-day Adventist Church, serving as a Bible class teacher and Head Elder. 

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