Spolar

Stephen Spolar was a banker who helped thousands of people attain the American dream of home-ownership — and an amiable realist who knew when to say no.

Spolar, 94, spent most of his career at the Pittsburgh Home Savings and Loan, later transformed into Bank Pittsburgh and then merged into First Commonwealth Bank. As he rose to president at the savings and loan, Spolar continued to do what good community lenders always did: visit properties and meet with mortgage applicants to make sure their paychecks were steady, stable and could cover their loans.

Long after he retired at 72, people who had benefited from Spolar's advice would recall — sometimes in chance encounters with family members — how his care and common sense changed their lives.

“Do you know this man?” a teller at a rival bank in Pittsburgh asked Andrew Shepard when he handed over a check, a graduation gift, signed by his Granddad Spolar. “Because he is a great person. He helped me get my first house.”

Stephen Spolar, formerly of Butler, died peacefully surrounded by family on July 18, 2015. Over his lifetime, he volunteered at the Holy Sepulcher Church in Glade Mills where his four children had attended school. He taught accounting and real estate appraisal classes at Slippery Rock University, Butler County Community College, Robert Morris University and LaRoche College where, in his later years, he attended Sunday Mass with his wife Carole.

The Spolars, married for 63 years, had a home in Penn Township for nearly 50 years. They moved in 2011 to Vincentian Village, a retirement community in McCandless. They joined Sunrise Senior Living there in July 2013. They lived together, still hosting family parties in their one-bedroom apartment until Carole died in September 2014.

Spolar retired from banking in 1992 but through May 2012 he was an active member of the Board of Advisors at First Commonwealth. Keen on current events, he attended political science and foreign policy classes at LaRoche until February 2013, the month he fell and broke a hip. He took pride that he was one of the oldest, and perhaps the oldest, person to ever attend classes at LaRoche.

Spolar grew up in Glassport as the child of Croatian immigrants and the son of a Copperweld foreman. Born March 30, 1921, Spolar's life reflected the hardships and aspirations of 20th century America.

His father died when Spolar was 16. The teen then worked day and night to provide for his mother and himself. He was the first child in his family to attend university. He earned a bachelor's and master's degree from University of Pittsburgh — with a few years of World War II wedged in.

Enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1943, he was among troops heaving supplies from low-flying aircraft to the 82nd Airborne in the Normandy invasion of June 1944. His first mission was D-Day plus 1. On his next flight, his plane was hit by enemy fire and crash landed near Brussels. Everyone survived to return to England. Spolar later explored London and then Paris, adventures that he delighted in re-telling.

He grew up speaking English and Croatian, and as a youth, he helped immigrant workers at Copperweld Steel qualify for company health care. As an adult, he volunteered through the Rotary Club, where he served as president in Butler, and through the Knights of Columbus, where he was a fourth-degree knight. He was also a parole counselor.

Spolar realized the value of home ownership at a young age. His own father, by sheer luck, outsmarted the financial crash leading to the Great Depression. The elder Spolar, with a nine-year-old Steve at his side, withdrew all his savings, $8,000, from a bank to buy a house in 1930. Days after, the bank collapsed.

Spolar worked into his 70s to provide what he and his wife, Carole, most wanted for their son and three daughters: university educations. The Spolars encouraged their grandchildren, six college graduates among them, to pursue ambitions in film, journalism, business and economics.

In his last years, Spolar and his wife worked on a family history — more than 100 pages of memories — for their grandchildren. A sports fan, Spolar recounted summer days at Forbes Field where he watched Pie Traynor, Ralph Kiner, Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige play ball. Spolar saw his first major league game in 1939 and paid 35 cents for a left-field bleacher seat. He was at Forbes Field for the 7th game of the World Series in 1960.

“Mazerowski's home run cleared the left field by a foot. I can still see Yogi Berra going over to the wall, hoping he could catch it. And then he just dropped his arms … and then everybody went crazy. The scene was wild. You couldn't believe it.

“Then, after that, I saw one game in every World Series that the Pirates were in,” he said.

Spolar traveled to Europe and across the US with his wife in their leisure years, but he loved to return to Pittsburgh. In his memoir, Spolar said he had one regret: “You know, I wish I had kept a diary.”

In his last days, he deeply missed his wife Carole but his family helped fill the hours. His greatest joy in 2015 was the birth of his first great-grandchild, Oliver Lind Shepard, the son of his oldest grandchild, Stephen. He beamed when he held young Ollie after his christening in April and, in his last week, he and Oliver grinned at each other during a visit at Sunrise. But Steve — as he was called by the staff at Sunrise — also expanded his notion of family in those last months.

The caseworkers at Sunrise watched him like a father. He told his own children that Emily, Tina, Rose, Andrew, Keyona, Tee, Hillary, Nice, Kim, Shannon, Jordan, Clint, Bubbles and Marsha (and there are many more) were like family. David Albert, a nurse who had left Sunrise, visited day and night and brought his children to meet and hear his stories. Mark Tobin, another nurse, sang the “Ave Maria” at his wife's funeral. In Steve's last days, Mark came by to pray a rosary. Deanna, a hospice nurse, brought church dinners and balloons on his 94th birthday. Summer, another hospice nurse, confided that Steve, to her, was the definition of “noble.”

Mr. Spolar is survived by his children, Stephen (wife, Jody) of Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh; Carole Shepard (husband, Mark) of Wexford; Christine of London, England; and Cathleen Roberts (husband, Mark and son, Julian) of Biloxi, Miss. Grandchildren include Stephen Shepard (wife, Molly) of New York, Andrew Shepard of Chicago, Maureen Shepard of Los Angeles, Matthew Spolar of New York, Ellen Spolar of Washington, D.C., and Zachary Spolar of New York. A brother, John, preceded him in death.

SPOLAR — Friends of Stephen Spolar, who died Saturday, July 18, 2015, will be received from 4 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the THOMPSON-MILLER FUNERAL HOME, 124 E. North St., Butler.A funeral Mass will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Holy Sepulcher Church, 1304 E. Cruikshank Road, Butler.The family requests memorial donations be made to the Holy Sepulcher Church, 1304 E. Cruikshank Road, Butler, PA 16001.Online condolences can be given at www.thompson-miller.com.