An Extraordinary Life: Frankfort college professor was mentor to many

FRANKFORT – Kristi Spengler of Frankfort proudly relates how her husband Erich Spengler saved the lives of two children.

One was a toddler who had jumped into a public pool. The other was a preschooler who had caught her head in a car window at an ice cream stand and was suffocating. Erich, Kristi said, broke the window.

“He was very outgoing with a big heart,” Kristi said, “the type that would do anything for anyone.”

But then, everything about Erich was about fostering new life and fresh opportunities. In his personal life, Erich and Kristi adopted two girls – Emily, 17, from Siberia and Lauren, 14, from Kazakhstan.

Today, Emily is a figure skater, outgoing and with great confidence, Kristi said. Lauren and Erich “hung out together” and were “best buddies,” Kristi said.

“She called him her Prince Erich,” Kristi said.

In his professional life, Erich was no different. For more than 20 years, Erich was a professor of integrated technology at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills. He also was a senior lecturer at Northwestern University in Evanston.

Since 2003, he served as the director and principal investigator of the National Science Foundation Advanced Technology Education Center for Systems Security and Information Assurance at Moraine.

Mostly Erich worked with adults making career changes and was defined as that educator who made people’s lives better because of it, Kristi said. Erich, she added, put his “heart and soul” into that job.

“He was a great motivator,” Kristi said. “He made everyone feel good about themselves.”

Kristi met Erich on a blind date when they were 19 and they immediately felt a connection. She loved his spontaneity and natural intelligence. Kristi learned that Erich, by 12, was rebuilding car engines. He could do the same with computers.

“He just loved hands-on things,” Kristi said. “He was just so smart and so well-rounded.”

Ironically, Erich’s high school job as a lifeguard may have contributed to a cancerous lesion – malignant melanoma – on his back 17 years ago. But Erich was lucky. The cancer was removed, and Erich had regular skin checkups every six months, Kristi said.

In the fall of 2012, Erich experienced vague symptoms – fatigue, sweating, vomiting – so his doctor ordered a CT scan. Two days after Christmas, Erich learned the melanoma had never really gone away. The doctor gave him three to six months to live.

“It was all over his liver,” Kristi said.

But Erich fought back and submitted to a range of treatments, from the traditional to participating in clinical trials. Kristi said Erich figured that, by trying them all, he would find a cure. Nothing worked.

But Erich continued to work during his two-year cancer battle. If he was too ill to commute, he Skyped with his students. In August, the day after he was discharged from the hospital, he flew with Kristi to Washington, D.C., for a cousin’s wedding.

About two weeks before Erich’s death Nov. 11 at age 48, Erich was helping one of his students at Northwestern finish his thesis, Kristi said.

“Erich had such a drive within him,” Kristi said. “He thought that, even when things get difficult, you keep moving forward, not just with your profession, but with everything in life. He never settled for second best.”

• To feature someone in "An Extraordinary Life," contact Denise M. Baran-Unland at 815-280-4122 or dunland@shawmedia.com.